The National Wetlands Coalition, founded in 1989, has opposed U.S.

wetlands A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

policy, saying "the federal government, while seeking to protect wetlands, casts a wide net and imposes burdensome and ineffective regulations on private property that does not function as or provide the ecosystem benefits of high-value wetlands". ''Time Magazine'' called it "a big-biz coalition against wetlands". In 1995, the organization consisted of about 60 municipal associations, utilities and major industrial companies, such as

Exxon ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...

Texaco Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American Petroleum, oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its Gasoline, fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an Indepe ...

and

Kerr-McGee The Kerr-McGee Corporation, founded in 1929, was an American energy company involved in oil exploration, production of crude oil, natural gas, perchlorate and uranium mining and milling in various countries. On June 23, 2006, Anadarko Petroleum ...

. The National Wetlands Coalition has been characterized as the quintessential astroturf organization, which is an organization that presents itself as a

grassroots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...

organization, but was actually founded by (and is largely funded by) a separate commercial or political organization in order to promote its own agenda, while keeping its relationship to the new organization hidden. A study by the

University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...

used the National Wetlands Coalition as a specific example to examine the influence of corporate front-group stealth campaigns, in which corporations form associations that, in turn, adopt names that are designed to misrepresent their true intentions. The results of the study indicated that front-group stealth campaigns were effective in enhancing public perceptions of the front group itself. The National Wetlands Coalition campaigns successfully undermined perceptions of the targeted attitude object, eroding support for any federal efforts to restrict wetlands’ development or regulate developers. The organization has been relatively inactive since around the late 1990s. The website was being "reworked" from February 2001 through November 2005; it went offline in December 2005.

Bibliography

* Hebert, James, ''The

San Diego Union-Tribune ''The San Diego Union-Tribune'' is a metropolitan daily newspaper published in San Diego, California, that has run since 1868. Its name derives from a 1992 merger between the two major daily newspapers at the time, ''The San Diego Union'' and ...

'', July 1, 2003, p. E-1, "False Fronts: Consider the source -- if you can identify it"

References

External links

Official National Wetlands Coalition website
(no longer functioning) {{Wetlands Wetlands organizations

See also

Bibliography

References

External links