Wetlands are the Most Threatened Ecosystems

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Wetlands are the Most Threatened Ecosystems

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Wetlands most threatened ecosystem
2012-05-22 22:00

Durban - South Africa’s wetlands are the most threatened ecosystem in the country, the National Biodiversity Assessment 2011 (NBA 2011) has found.

KwaZulu-Natal, North West and Gauteng were expected to have no natural vegetation outside of protected areas by 2050.

Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa released the NBA 2011 in St Lucia on Tuesday.

Based on NBA 2011, the growth of agriculture, mining and urban sprawl were the main causes of a loss of natural vegetation in the three provinces, according to the presentation.

Areas taken over by non-native or alien invasive plants had more than doubled from 10 million hectares to 20 million hectares between the mid-1990s and 2007.

"Failure to protect biodiversity is self-defeating because we are all going to lose in the end, the rural poor being the most affected. This is because many of our communities are directly dependent on biodiversity and ecosystems services," said Molewa.

She said that while many people were aware of the need for roads and electricity, not enough realised "the services we get from our ecological infrastructure like wetlands, mountains, rivers, coastal dunes and vegetation".

"These ecosystem services, like municipal services, play an essential role in supporting social development and economic prosperity."

NBA 2011 is a comprehensive technical assessment of the state of South Africa’s biodiversity and ecosystems, across terrestrial, freshwater, estuarine and marine environments.

- SAPA -

http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Wetl ... m-20120522


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Endangered Wetlands

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Biodiversity bomb: River Club development in Cape Town poses threat to variety of birdlife and wildlife

By Isabella Hayden• 9 June 2021

Image
Giant kingfisher on the Liesbeek River. (Photo: Dan Retief)

For the past 30 years, the strident call of the giant kingfisher flying up the lower reaches of the Liesbeek River could be heard. Now that call may be silenced forever by the proposed River Club development.

Isabella Hayden is a long-time birder, a former member of the Two Rivers Urban Park Association, a former member of the Friends of the Rosebank and Mowbray Greenbelt, and a concerned member of the public.

In April, it was announced that the controversial Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust (LLPT) development in Observatory was given the green light by the City of Cape Town. The River Club development in its current form will destroy the habitat and breeding sites of a variety of birdlife and wildlife, including three species of kingfishers (giant, malachite and pied).

The old river course is the small section of river running from the traffic lights and bridge (Liesbeek Parkway and Station Rd/Observatory Rd intersection) northwards, parallel to Liesbeek Parkway. It is not a pretty area, to be sure, but it is important because the kingfishers use this section of the river, and it’s the only piece of the Liesbeek in that area that has suitably high, vertical banks for their breeding holes. The rest is mostly canalised with concrete and cement.

This image shows where the old river course is, connected by pipeline (blocked) under Observatory Rd to the Liesbeek on the other side of the road. The canalised section east of the River Club was built in 1980 to divert the Liesbeek towards the Black River.

Image
Overview of the old Liesbeek River course. (Photo: SRK Consulting)

The City’s response to the proposed development is conflicted and problematic. On the one hand, there’s the Municipal Planning Tribunal which looks at land use and development, and which has long been perceived to place economic development ahead of all other considerations. US retail giant Amazon was not looking specifically at the River Club for office space — Amazon was looking for additional space in Cape Town, and they were offered a choice of three sites by the City, including this one, with its beautiful and central location.

On the other hand, the City of Cape Town is fully aware of the importance of biodiversity, and is seemingly proud of it. For example, Cape Town came out tops in several categories in the recent (international) City Nature Challenge, which the City itself advertised widely and supported.

With the River Club development, however, the City seems to largely be willing to sacrifice some biodiversity by destroying a wetland habitat (wetlands being the most threatened of all habitats worldwide). The most detailed and independent analyses of heritage and environmental considerations are provided by the City’s own competent authorities at Heritage Western Cape (HWC) and the Environmental Management Department (EMD), which both concluded that the development neither meets the City’s policies on the environment nor the HWC’s standards.

In March, the City’s own EMD lodged an appeal against the Environmental Authorisation (EA) granted by the provincial Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, saying the EA did not give sufficient weight to the environmental impacts that would result from the scale of the development.

“It is not acknowledged in the EA that the area of the Liesbeek River that will be infilled to create a stormwater swale, represents part of the last remains of the historic Liesbeek River channel, which has ecological and ecohistorical importance. It is impossible to mitigate the loss of a natural habitat such as the Liesbeek River,” read a department statement

Planting up the swale with indigenous wetland plants afterwards does not undo the damage and will not replace the habitat that exists there now.

The developers, LLPT, plan to replace the River Club with the development pictured below.

Image
The River Club development layout.

Notice that the original river course (just west of the yellow dotted line) is filled in and planted over, and this is the problem.

“The western boundary will be converted into a vegetated swale (sunken ground covered with plants which will absorb and filter stormwater),” according to the City of Cape Town Media Office.

Marc Turok of Two Rivers Urban Park Association (Trupa) suggests the reason behind infilling the old river course is so that this part of the Liesbeek can be declared dead; then the developer need not leave a setback of 35 metre from the water’s edge as a buffer zone. As can be seen from the development layout, the buildings will extend from one edge of the property to the other, barring the eastern side.

Both the City and LLPT seem to have overlooked that the old river course is teeming with life, even though it has been allowed to become degraded and covered with invasive weeds due to lack of maintenance and intentional, illegal infilling by the River Club owners. The City, through its own lack of maintenance and neglect, has caused “the natural channel of the Liesbeek River [to become] disconnected from the Liesbeek River and now [it] functions as a backwater wetland”. This is from the Biodiversity Impact Assessment for this development, compiled by Dr Liz Day with input from Dr Tony Williams (avifaunal specialist). They go on to say: “it does however provide habitat to important bird species and may provide breeding areas to western leopard toads”.

Nick Fordyce has been very active with the Friends of the Liesbeek (FOL) and has a master’s in environmental law. He has strong words on the subject.

“The River Club development is an appalling idea, clearly being driven by a select few with little appreciation for the environment. It is wholly inappropriate that the developers label the site as degraded. It is only degraded because they [the owners of the River Club] have illegally dumped numerous times on the site — often by dumping illegal fill on the site from construction sites elsewhere, to raise their banks. This is in direct contrast to local communities right along the full length of the Liesbeek, who over many years, and in some cases decades, have volunteered their time to help clean, rehabilitate and restore the Liesbeek and its surroundings. Organisations like the Upper Liesbeek River Garden, Friends of Paradise Park, Friends of the Rosebank and Mowbray Greenbelt, Communitree and the Friends of the Liesbeek (the latter which work annually to bring in over R500,000 to run the full-time Liesbeek Maintenance Project).

“This site represents a tiny fragment of natural land in a biodiverse city that is home to a number of critically threatened endemic species (the Moraea aristata and western leopard toads being the flag bearers) that is also steeped in rich heritage — but it seems to now represent a case of capitalism vs the environment. If this goes ahead, it rather begs the question of whether we ought to have environmental legislation at all!”

The City is back-tracking on its 2015 Biodiversity agreement with CapeNature, which “protects in perpetuity” a large part of the area, including the section of the river in question. These protected areas run along the Liesbeek River and the associated wetlands, and the Black River, including the Raapenberg Bird Sanctuary and associated wetlands.

Image
Kingfishers on the Liesbeek River – Malachite and Pied. (Photos: Nick Fordyce and Otto Scmidt)

LLPT seems to want to project an environmentally sound image — the River Club web page describes the new development as having 65% green space (although it’s very hard to see how that could be possible), and five-star green building and design principles. In their Planning Policy Report, there seems to be the intention to comply with Western Cape Spatial Framework (2104) policies to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services and to rehabilitate degraded aquatic systems. But that is contradicted by the plan to destroy an existing habitat by infilling the old river course. A more biodiversity-conscious approach would be to leave the setback undeveloped and restore the river to a healthy condition.

The developer’s Environmental Management Plan speaks of conducting faunal search-and-rescues as a mitigating measure prior to starting each phase of construction, but in practice, only a small fraction of the wildlife could be relocated. Most of the wildlife that cannot fly or escape otherwise, will be killed during the construction process.

Has the City been playing into the developer’s hands? Leslie London of the Observatory Civic Association (OCA) said “the original river course [is] not being managed effectively and is not being replenished by fresh water from the Liesbeek. The intended connection between the river south and north of Observatory Rd is choked by alien plant growth in the river that is not cleared, nor are the pipes regularly cleared of debris and garbage. Instead of fixing the problem, which is the City’s responsibility, the connection has been allowed to become and remain blocked, allowing the developer to attribute uselessness to the portion of the Liesbeek distal to the blockage alongside the River Club and conveniently motivate for its infill.”

From a 2013 report — the secretary of FOL, Francine Becker, notified the councillor for Observatory (Brett Herron, at that time) that large trucks belonging to a certain demolition company were seen dumping soil into the river and on its banks all weekend. Becker said, “soil dumping affected bird habitats…the area was a prime kingfisher breeding ground, a grey heron fishing area and a place where yellow-billed ducks roosted.”

She also pointed out that raising the soil level would reduce the rate of stormwater draining from the parking area and roads. The River Club’s unauthorised dumping of infill into the river, close to the inlet pipe, to stabilise the bank for their golf course, was reported to the city as a bylaw infringement. It has not been established if the city took any action.

Turok of Trupa said, “There have been serious academic papers and doctoral theses written about the need to restore the Liesbeek and many note its great heritage value (also as a freshwater biodiversity resource). Some clearing of debris has been done recently but the fundamental fault that is restricting flow has not been attended to.

“Prof Kevin Winter of UCT, a noted specialist on the Liesbeek River, has done years of research on it… his top students have also expressed support for the established policy to restore flow and yet our City disregards its own policy and advice from independent specialists.”

In 2019, Delft University researchers under Prof Winter produced a report showing that investment in rehabilitating the existing river would be both feasible and desirable, and say, “Filling up the original Liesbeek River channel would have negative impacts on seasonal flooding, ecology and the water quality.”

This part of the river, although neglected and degraded, is far from dead. Looking over it a month ago, a group of birders could hear hundreds of clicking stream frogs calling, despite the degradation. This quiet section of the river with its still waters is the perfect habitat for any number of indigenous frog species and their tadpoles, such as the critically endangered western leopard toad, and the Cape river frog, not to mention dragonflies, crabs, fish, snakes, water mongoose and Cape clawless otters which are in the area.

Furthermore and according to Jessleena Suri et al, “The occurrence of three species of kingfisher catchment is important given that they are ecosystem engineers which can create habitat for other organisms (reptiles, amphibians and insects) through their nesting burrows.”

Late in May 2021, another group saw or heard 39 species of birds in less than two hours, in or around the rivers bordering on the River Club, among them the resident malachite kingfisher, black-crowned night heron and African black duck. Nick Fordyce’s wildlife photos show some of the diversity of life in the area.

In conclusion, the existing river banks should be left as they are and not turned into a swale. The vertical banks allow the three species of kingfishers (malachite, pied and giant) to breed, as well as the river itself providing habitat for frogs, toads and other biodiversity. A swale is not suitable for kingfisher breeding. Without breeding sites, they will disappear from the area. The setback of 35 metres should be retained, and the river course restored to full functionality and turned into an ecological asset.

All this information was given to the City and the developers, but they have chosen to ignore specialist environmental and heritage input. DM

The Observatory Civic Association, under Professor Leslie London, has started a campaign to raise funds to challenge the approval of the development in the high court. Contributions can be made at BackaBuddy.


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Re: Wetlands are the Most Threatened Ecosystems

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Massive Oil Spill Washes Up on Southern California’s Beaches

By Bloomberg• By Max Reyes - 3 October 2021

A huge oil spill off the coast of California has washed up on the beaches of Orange County and threatens to contaminate nearby wetlands, the City of Huntington Beach said in a statement Sunday.

The 3,000-barrel spill has created an oil slick plume stretching 5.8 nautical miles, from Huntington Beach Pier to Newport Beach, the statement said. City officials have asked people to stay off the beaches. Crews led by the U.S. Coast Guard are working on the cleanup.

The spill was likely caused by a ruptured pipeline connected to an offshore oil platform known as Elly that is operated by Beta Operating Co., Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said on Twitter. Officials from Amplify Energy Corp., the parent of Beta, didn’t respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg.


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Worst California Oil Spill in 27 Years May Be From an Anchor

By Bloomberg• 4 October 2021 By Josyana Joshua and Kevin Crowley

(Bloomberg) --The owner of a pipeline at the heart of California’s worst oil spill in almost 30 years is investigating the disaster site with a remotely controlled device and local authorities warned the cleanup may take weeks.

Amplify Energy Corp. is getting close to “a source and a cause” of the incident, which may have been caused by a ship’s anchor, Chief Executive Officer Martyn Willsher said at a press conference Monday. The spill that began on Saturday dumped about 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons) of crude into the Pacific Ocean near the seaside community of Huntington Beach, which hosted the U.S. Open of Surfing last week.

That’s the Golden State’s largest such disaster since a 1994 earthquake split open a pipeline and poured about 4,500 barrels into the sea, according to a database compiled by the non-profit Public Media Group of Southern California. Amplify tumbled as much as 53% on Monday. Shares pared some of the losses after the press conference, triggering a temporary trading halt.

The spill comes at a time when regulatory scepticism of the oil industry’s environmental practices already was sky high. Last week, the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission voted to block an Exxon Mobil Corp. proposal to transport crude by tanker truck and restart three offshore platforms in the area.

The disaster should embolden Congressional Democrats to pass legislation that would protect places like Southern California from such incidents, said Diane Hoskins, a campaign director at ocean-conservation group Oceana.

Volunteers worked Sunday to try to clear crude oil from a beach in Southern California, after an estimated 126,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the waters off Orange County starting late Friday or early Saturday.

A wide swath of beach and ocean remained closed and more than 2,000 feet of floating barriers have been deployed to help contain the spilled crude, Huntington Beach city leaders said in a statement.

Willsher said the company has sufficient insurance and other resources to handle the cost of the incident.

In June, the company’s loan under the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program was forgiven in full. At the end of that month, Amplify had net debt of about $216 million.


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Amplify Took Three Hours to Halt California Oil Pipeline Spill

(Bloomberg) --Oil driller Amplify Energy Corp. took more than three hours to halt California’s worst oil spill in almost three decades, according to a government report.

By Robert Tuttle
Oct 5, 2021, 10:07 PM

Following a low-pressure alarm around 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 2 from its San Pedro Bay Pipeline, Amplify’s Beta Offshore unit didn’t shut the pipeline down until 6:01 a.m., U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said in corrective action order Tuesday.

The company didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.

The Golden State’s largest oil leak since a 1994 earthquake split open a pipeline spilled as much as 3,000 barrels along the California coast, according to Amplify’s estimates. The oil has has drifted southward, forced the closure of popular surfing beaches and sullied wetlands.

Also See: Oil-Fouled California Beaches Rekindle Demands for Offshore Ban

After shutting the pipeline, Beta didn’t report the incident to the National Response Center for another three hours, according to the report. Initial estimates indicated that the pipeline released about 700 barrels, much less than the company’s number.

The root cause of the accident remains unconfirmed but “preliminary reports indicate that the failure may have been caused by an anchor that hooked the pipeline, causing a partial tear,” according to to the order.

© 2021 Bloomberg L.P.


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Re: Wetlands are the Most Threatened Ecosystems

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@#$


Please check Needs Attention pre-booking: https://africawild-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=596
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Re: Wetlands are the Most Threatened Ecosystems

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Too many people around doing jobs that they are not properly prepared for :evil:


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South Africa’s endangered wetlands need protecting

Image
Pelicans take off at dawn from the Rietvlei Wetland Reserve in Cape Town on 5 January 2007. (Photo: EPA/Nic Bothma)

By Onke Ngcuka | 02 Feb 2022

South Africa’s wetlands are in a critical state – although steps are being taken to better conserve these ecosystems.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Existing wetlands make up about 2.4% of South Africa’s surface area, but only 11% of them are protected. In a water-scarce country, protecting wetlands is key to ensuring better water quality.

Despite the small area covered by wetlands, they contribute R4.2-billion per year to South Africa’s economy. They are key points for development, tourism, recreation, supporting biodiversity, livelihoods and marine fisheries.

The Berg Estuary, which was declared a Ramsar site on World Wetlands Day, contributes about 60% of the estuary habitat on the West Coast and plays a pivotal role in biodiversity and cultural and economic activities. It is the second wetland in South Africa to be declared a site of national importance in two years; the Ingula Nature Reserve in the northern Drakensberg was the last declared Ramsar site in 2021.

“The declaration of South Africa’s 28th Ramsar site is an indication of the importance of conserving and protecting these unique environments that are considered super ecosystems because of their contribution to the provision of water and because they provide habitats to a large variety of migratory birds, especially water birds,” said Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries Barbara Creecy.

The 2019 National Biodiversity Assessment concluded that wetlands have the highest proportion of threatened ecosystem types as well as the least-protected ecosystems. Wetlands play an important role in water conservation since the poor flow of water through the ecological systems makes expensive water treatment necessary.

According to the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, wetlands play a role in supplying water that sustains 60% of the country’s population, more than 90% of urban water users, 67% of national economic activity and 70% of irrigated agriculture.

Known for being marsh pits of still water – between aquatic and terrestrial systems supporting vegetation adapted for saturated soils – wetlands function as water-purifying bodies. They play a role in slowing down flood waters, are natural filters and provide food and shelter for nearby animals.

Wetland ecosystems are threatened mainly by invasive alien species, erosion, developments in and around them, pollution and excessive nutrients, slash-and-burn agriculture and mining.

Conserving them is of great importance as the world is losing them three times faster than forests, with nearly 90% of them having degraded since the 1700s, according to Ramsar.

South Africa’s wetlands include the Blesbokspruit wetlands, with some in the Ntsikeni Nature Reserve, Natal Drakensberg Park, Prince Edward Islands, St Lucia, Bot-Kleinmond Estuarine and Verlorenvlei.

Verlorenvlei is among the most important wetlands and the largest on the West Coast, at 13.5km long and 1.4km wide. The system has been reported to be drying up, with the surface water in the vlei being saline and unusable. The vlei houses more than 4,000 birds and is a space of significance for conservation of the birds and other biodiversity.

Image
General view during the World Wetlands Day at Bayhead Natural Heritage Site on February 2, 2020, in Durban, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images/Darren Stewart)

Last year, in an effort to improve Cape Town’s water bodies, the City of Cape Town restored an old wetland, the Zandvlei estuary. The improvement of the Muizenberg vlei aimed to revive the wetland habitat, though residents had concerns about the vlei being polluted, as another in the area had been.

One of the country’s biggest wetlands, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, which was listed as South Africa’s first World Heritage Site in 1999, will be on the receiving end of space-based sensors for wetland monitoring.

The three-year project, funded by the Water Research Commission and led by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, will focus on the Maputaland Coastal Plain. Wetlands make up a quarter of the coastal plain, an area rich in wetland biodiversity, swamp forests, mangroves and floodplain forests, grass and sedge wetlands.

The plain is in northern KwaZulu-Natal, running along 8,000km2 of the eastern coastline. The focus will be on monitoring changes in wetlands that are often hidden beneath forest canopies and other vegetation, or exist as temporary pans following rains.

The Water Research Commission’s research manager overseeing the project, Bonani Madikizela, said: “Many of the wetlands of the Maputaland Coastal Plain are under severe stress, yet they are so important to the marginalised sectors of our communities that rely on them for food and other ecosystem services.”

Dr Heide van Deventer, who is leading the project, said remote sensing could be valuable for monitoring the coastal plain’s wetlands as these can be difficult to access due to muddy conditions and potential encounters with hippos, crocodiles, buffaloes and elephants.

“Areas in need of rehabilitation could be more easily identified and prioritised [through the programme]. If successful, the intention is to incorporate this capability into the National Wetland Monitoring Programme.”

Despite wetlands taking up less than 3% of South Africa’s land, the benefits they provide are proportionately high as they provide water purification, nutrient cycling, carbon storage, storm protection, recreation and harvesting of food directly from nature. Protecting them could be of utmost importance for not only biodiversity, but also for the country’s water quality and resources, and society at large. DM/OBP


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Re: Wetlands are the Most Threatened Ecosystems

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Science Snippets: Where Frogs Flourish

Comparing frogs and habitats in KwaZulu Natal

Cherise Acker, EWT’s Threatened Amphibian Programme, Cherisea@ewt.org.za

Wetlands are important ecosystems that supply essential ecological goods and services (EGS) for wildlife and people. They supply clean water and fertile soil for plants, filter water from upstream, regulate water flow to prevent flooding, store water to ease drought periods, and reduce the effects of climate change, improving ecological and social resilience. Protection and conservation of wetlands are essential to support communities through environmental disasters caused by climate change.

Wetland health and ecological goods and service quality assessments are valuable in determining the ecological state of wetlands to inform conservation management actions. The Endangered Wildlife Trust’s (EWT) Threatened Amphibian Programme (TAP) aims to show the link between amphibian diversity (i.e. healthy amphibian populations) and wetland habitat health. In other words, if wetlands are in a poor ecological state, amphibian diversity decreases and vice versa. Indirectly, better species and ecological health also support healthy human populations. To this end, we started long-term monitoring protocols in 2016 to determine habitat health and identify amphibian species diversity at four project sites in eThekwini Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal, where the threatened Pickersgill’s Reed Frog (Hyperolius pickersgilli) occurs.

These sites included Adams Mission, Mt Moreland’s Froggy Pond, Widenham, and Isipingo. Wetland health scores, EGS scores, and amphibian diversity from each site were compared to determine whether amphibian species richness increases or decreases under different habitat conditions.

Image
Figure 1: Diagram illustrating the correlation between amphibian species diversity and wetland health.

The data showed a significant positive relationship between the amphibian species diversity and Wetland Health assessment scores between the four sites (P-Value 0.04077) (Social Statistics, 2022), as illustrated in Figure 1.

Species composition for each site showed that some species were found across all sites (Figure 2). These included Hyperolius tuberlinguis, Hyperolius marmoratus, Leptopelis natalensis (Figure 3), and Hyperolius pickersgilli was also present at all four sites, but Hyperolius pickersgilli was one of the site selection criteria and as such, expected to be present at all the sites.

Image
Figure 2: Species present according to the number of sites, i.e. Hyperolius tuberilenguis occurs in all four sites while Natalobatractus bonebergi, only occurs in one site.

Image
Figure 4: Hyperolius tuberlinguis (top left), Hyperolius pickersgilli (top right), Leptopelis natalensis (bottom left) Hyperolius marmoratus (bottom right)

The study’s results indicate a statistically significant positive relationship between these two variables, demonstrating that amphibian species diversity will decrease as wetland health decreases and vice versa. Reinforcing the value of amphibian species diversity in indicating wetland health. Amphibians may be an effective monitoring tool for managing wetlands within the eThekwini Municipality. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that improving habitat health through restoration or rehabilitation could positively impact amphibian species diversity.


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Wetlands — critical ecosystems to keep migrating birds soaring — are under global threat

Image
Africa is home to the African-Eurasian Flyway, which is used by about 2 billion birds annually. (Photo: Unsplash / Barth Bailey)

By Julie Mulonga and Kariuki Ndang’ang’a | 15 May 2023

Migratory birds rely on water and habitats like wetlands for migration, breeding and resting. Although they only cover about 6% of the Earth’s land surface area, wetlands are critical ecosystems — about 40% of all plant and animal species live or breed in wetlands.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For centuries, the phenomenon of bird migration has awed humanity. So much so that the fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher Aristotle, noting that the types of birds around him changed with the seasons, suggested that birds hibernated in trees or underwater and magically changed into different types of birds during winter. In the 17th century, English scientist Charles Morton wrote a paper claiming birds migrated to the moon and back every year.

These attempts to explain migration illustrate the keen interest humanity has taken in these birds as they travel thousands of kilometres on migration routes known as flyways, traversing continents in search of feeding, breeding and resting grounds.

Africa is home to the African-Eurasian Flyway which is used by about 2 billion birds annually. Migratory birds play a critical role in our environment through pollination and controlling pests, and providing economic benefits through birdwatching, among others. Additionally, birds are good early warning systems of the planet’s health. Severe declines in bird numbers portend current and future threats that biodiversity and people will face.

Migratory birds rely on water and habitats like wetlands for migration, breeding and resting. Although they only cover about 6% of the Earth’s land surface area, wetlands are critical ecosystems — about 40% of all plant and animal species live or breed in wetlands.

Wetlands also play a crucial role in combating climate change by absorbing huge amounts of carbon and providing essential ecosystem services like flood control and water regulation, in addition to supporting the livelihoods of more than 1 billion people across the world.

However, wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate. It is estimated that the world has lost about 35% of these critical ecosystems since the 1970s, negatively impacting species including birds.

Various factors, including pollution, agricultural and urban developments, in addition to climate change, are threatening wetlands. In the Sahel region, for instance, Lake Chad — bordering Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon — has shrunk from 26,000 square kilometres in the 1960s to less than 1,500 square kilometres today.

Thus, protecting and restoring these important sites for migratory birds is critical. One of the ways through which this can be done is through collaborations and partnerships.

A good example of this is in Asia’s East Asian Australasian Flyway stretching from Siberia and Alaska to New Zealand and Australia, where BirdLife — in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank and the East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership Secretariat — launched a $3-billion Regional Flyway Initiative in 2021.

The initiative aims at the protection and restoration of more than 50 key wetlands sites along the Flyway which are important sites for millions of migratory birds, in addition to supporting livelihoods of millions of people through fisheries and agriculture, among others. Such models can be replicated across flyways, benefitting nature and people.

Equally important is the need for concerted efforts from various stakeholders, including local communities and policy and decision-makers, to identify and implement relevant solutions to conserve these critical habitats. Migratory birds and wetlands connect countries, and their conservation will require cooperation and coordination across national boundaries. DM

Julie Mulonga is the Director of Wetlands International Eastern Africa. Dr Kariuki Ndang’ang’a is the Africa Regional Director of BirdLife International.


"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
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