In the routine stream of work emails that contain no doubt import stuff (I will get round to reading them, honest) - one caught my eye. It was from our Mark Day who often sends emails at the more interesting end of the scale. Mark works upstairs in International where he leads our work with partners in Europe.
Anyway – the good news is that the Romanian Ministry of Environment and Forests have made seven areas ‘wetlands of international importance’ covering an impressive 400,000 hectares. This has been delivered with the support of WWF.
These ‘wetlands of international importance’ are also known as Ramsar sites – jargon if ever there was – but very important none the less. The Ramsar Convention was created in the town of Ramsar on the Iranian coast of the Caspian Sea in 1971 and has proved to be a vital global convention in protecting wetlands. The date of the conference is celebrated every year on 2 February as World Wetlands Day. There are 2098 Ramsar sites around the world covering no less than 205,042,613 hectares!
These Ramsar site listings adds to the protection of the Danube – these sites are all river meadows on the Danube’s older arms. They are very rich in wildlife.
We’ve been working closely with our BirdLife International partner in Romania, SOR, and WWF’s Danube Carpathian programme to develop management plans for some of the areas.
Here’s a link to more on this story.
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It is always encouraging to hear good news such as this - just wish there was more of it..
CJ