In this blog Anne McCall, Director of RSPB Scotland, celebrates this year's World Wetlands Day.
World Wetlands Day 2018
You probably aren’t aware – unless you are obsessed with bogs and swamps - that February 2nd is World Wetlands Day. Here are just a few reasons why we should all be celebrating these fascinating and diverse habitats, not just today but all year round.
One benefit of our frequent wet weather is that Scotland has a wealth of wetland habitats, including blanket bogs and raised bogs, marshes, coastal wetlands and 30,000 freshwater lochs. These areas are home to some of our most loved species and play a far greater role in our livelihoods than most people realise, helping to provide clean drinking water, creating a natural flood defence, improving air quality in urban areas, and acting as a natural carbon store. Wetlands are therefore not only important for their amazing wildlife, but also contribute hugely to public health and wellbeing.
RSPB Scotland Forsinard Flows
The Flow Country in North Scotland holds the largest continuous area of blanket bog habitat in Europe. This amazingly productive habitat supports all kinds of wildlife, including short-eared owls, golden eagles, merlins, mountain hares and many other species. Most importantly the Sphagnum mosses which blanket the floor – hence the name ‘blanket bog’ – build up deep layers of peat over time. When blanket bogs are in good condition they capture and store vast amounts of carbon and filter our drinking water. The RSPB has been working to this landscape for more than 20 years and is leading on the ‘Flows to the Future’ partnership project to protect and restore a large area of blanket bog, ensuring that it continues to perform these vital functions.
Marshland habitats play a key role in flood defence, as these grassy plains can hold large quantities of water during floods and storms. This type of habitat provides a home to huge numbers of wading birds, like at our RSPB reserve at Insh Marshes where the air is thick with the song of curlew in Spring, and you can see redshank, snipe and lapwing.
Curlew
Along Scotland’s coastline salt marsh helps to prevent coastal erosion and tidal flooding, as well as creating a nursery for fish and a food for many birds. Dune slacks, found in some dune systems, flood at certain types of the year and form unique and rare habitat for interesting invertebrates, as well as sheltering birds and other animals from predators and bad weather.
Urban wetlands, the theme of this year’s World Wetlands Day, offer significant health and wellbeing benefits for local communities as well as an opportunity to connect with the natural world. Baron’s Haugh, our community nature reserve in Motherwell, offers a chance for local residents to get up close to enigmatic species like kingfishers and otters in the wild, right on their doorstep.
Kingfisher
Wetlands are internationally protected by the Ramsar Convention, an agreement that requires member countries to classify important wetlands as ‘Ramsar sites’. These sites exist to protect wetland habitats and species from damaging development and land use change. Sadly, despite these protections, wetlands remain one of the most threatened habitats in the world due to practices, such as drainage of peatlands and floodplains, commercial forestry plantation, intensive agriculture and damaging development, which lead to loss and degradation. Climate change is adding further pressure to already vulnerable habitats.
The Scottish Government has made some good progress towards improving the state of Scotland’s wetlands. Wetland management and creation is being targeted through the Scottish Rural Development Programme and the Draft Climate Change Plan set a bold target to restore 250,000 hectares of degraded peatland by 2030, with funding available under the Peatland Action Programme. This is an ambitious and welcome commitment that will play a key role in helping Scotland to meet its internationally agreed climate and biodiversity targets. However, more could be done to restore our rivers and regain the function of natural flood plains, helping nature help us.
Recent research has shown that the most successful way to conserve wetland habitats worldwide is a combination of protected areas and effective governance. It is critically important that the protections given to designated areas like Ramsar sites are properly enforced. This means ensuring that planning permission is not granted to damaging development, such as the current planning application for a golf course at Coul Links, a unique and undisturbed system of dune habitats in East Sutherland. We must avoid our protected areas becoming ‘paper parks’, protected in name only. If you would like to help save Coul Links, please add your name to the thousands of others who have already objected by following the instructions here.
Wetlands after sunset at RSPB Scotland Loch Leven
Finally, we need our protected areas to be bigger, better and more connected. Land use change has caused our best wildlife sites to become ever smaller and more isolated, affecting the ability of our protected area network to deal with future pressures such as climate change. Increasing investment in Scotland’s National Ecological Network would improve, protect and connect fragmented wetland habitats, including in urban areas through the creation of Green Infrastructure, helping nature and giving communities better access to high quality, wildlife rich greenspace. This would help the Scottish Government to meet internationally agreed targets like the UN Sustainable Development Goals and ensure that these spectacular and invaluable habitats recover and go on to thrive in the future.