Gulf Oil Spill Wetlan_Bran.jpg

In this June 12, 2010 file photo, brown pelicans and seagulls are seen at a rookery near an absorbent boom soaked with oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in Barataria Bay near East Grand Terre, La. Two months after a drilling rig explosion triggered the nation's worst offshore spill, scientists are concluding that wetland damage is severe in some spots, especially in reedy swamps at the Mississippi's mouth. But they say it's confined mostly to outer edges of islands topped with marsh grasses and mangrove bushes.

((AP Photo/Eric Gay))

The Gulf Coast wetlands have not fared well going on two decades.

A new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration nationwide analysis shows that from 1996 to 2011 the Gulf Coast region lost 996 square miles of wetlands due to land subsidence and erosion, storms, man-made changes, sea level rise and other factors.



Total, 64,975 square miles in coastal regions – an area larger than Wisconsin – experienced changes in land cover including a decline in wetlands and forest cover with development a major contributing factor, according to the analysis.



Among the significant changes were the loss of 1,536 square miles of wetlands, and a decline in total forest cover by 6.1 percent, according to the study.

The findings also show: