o surprise that they maintain such a high level of biodiversity.
             This description is however the most basic possible, in that it only allows for a general identification of wetlands, rather than classifying them by type or by the systems to which they are a part of. Nowlan and Jeffries (1996) group wetlands into five categories in accordance with their parent systems: Marine, non-estuary saltwater wetlands; Estuarine, wetlands around the mouth of a river; Lacustrine, wetlands connected to lakes; Riverine, wetlands connected to rivers; Palustrine, marshy wetlands. This method if classification is most effective when viewing wetlands from a policy perspective as it allows for them to be classified as distinctly as possible. Zoltai, in Wetlands of Canada (1988) uses over sixty very specific descriptions for the different types of wetlands in Canada, the problem with this being that the traits of wetlands may change from season to season and within small geographic areas. There is a consensus that the coastal wetlands of the Pacific are of the greatest ecological significance in the field of biodiversity; as they never freeze and are therefore able to provide year round habitat for fish and wildlife (Nowlan and Jeffries, 1996).
             Wetlands have an anthropocentric value which has long been looked over in the development of society, in that they have traditionally been though of as barren wastelands which have no value to humans and therefore have been used as dumping grounds (Schiller and Flanagan, 1997). This "pioneer mentality" has lead to the paradigm that wetlands are only impeding urban development and that they are indeed useless because they have no immediate or apparent cash value. The truth however, is quite the contrary.
             Clean water, which is essential to all life, when extracted for consumption by cities and towns, can be attributed to wetlands (Schiller and Flanagan, 1997). Through natural breakdown and r...