Author Craig Pittman Discusses Florida's Vanishing Wetlands

Award-winning St. Petersburg Times journalist Craig Pittman presented the Summer 2009 Biodiversity Lecture on June 22 at Stetson's Tampa Law Center.

Pittman, whose work has twice earned the top investigative reporting prize in the nation from the Society of Environmental Journalists, discussed the struggle to protect Floridas wetlands. Stetsons Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy and Environmental Law Society co-sponsored the presentation. Stetson Law Professor Royal Gardner directs the Institute.

Pittman, who has co-authored "Paving Paradise: Floridas Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss" with fellow Times journalist Matthew Waite, discussed how reviewing satellite imagery revealed that the state of Florida had, by their estimates, lost at least 84,000 acres of wetlands since 1990. Pittman said that not enough had been done to measure actual preservation despite the goal of no net loss of wetlands for close to two decades.

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• florida
• wetlands
• wetland
• biodiversity
• stetson
• law
• lecture
• environment
• protection
• environmental