The race is on to save the state's wetlands

With global warming increasing the sea level, Galveston Island again is at the forefront of the state's efforts to hold back encroaching waters.

But this effort is softer and subtler than the last. Instead of cities, it seeks to save one of the state's most valuable natural resources: coastal wetlands that serve as nurseries for much of the Gulf of Mexico's marine life and feeding grounds for its shorebirds.

Wetlands line most of the bays along the 360-mile coast. These swampy areas filter pollution and absorb the brunt of storms.

Most important, they offer critical habitat that about 98 percent of the commercial fish and shellfish in the gulf depend on, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

As the seas rise, many scientists fear these wetlands are at risk of literally drowning. The loss of such habitat already is an issue up and down the Texas Coast, but nowhere is it more pronounced than Galveston Bay, where the gulf waters are rising faster than seas almost anywhere else in the country.

Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s, Galveston and its sister bays lost about a quarter of their wetlands, somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 acres, according to the Galveston Bay Estuary Program.

Development has contributed to the problem, but most of the loss comes from a combination of rising seas and sinking land, said Jarrett "Woody" Woodrow, program director for the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department.

It's the job of Woodrow and the small contingent of biologists in his office to slow the loss by reclaiming marshland.

Building vital marshes