Today is Wolrd Wetlands Day. Why Do People Need Them?

Wetlands are extremely important, just to name a few reasons: they provide valuable habitat for water-dependent animal and plant species, they clean water and slow its runoff, they act like a natural "sponge", protecting the surrounding landscape from the impact of floods, and they retain carbon.

Yet they also have a hard time. For the general public, a wetland is an obscure, poorly accessible place in the landscape. A slightly smelly and dangerous swamp, in which you can probably drown (undoubtedly inspired by The Neverending Story movie).

Just a few decades ago, wetland habitats in our country were drained extensively with the aim of transforming them into something drier, usable for agriculture.

Nonetheless, the importance of wetlands and their level of endangerment have been discussed internationally under the leadership of (not only) the IUCN since the early 1960s. In the early 1970s, specifically on February 2, 1971, the first states in Ramsar, Iran, signed the so-called Ramsar Convention.

This treaty deals with the global protection and wise use of all possible types of wetlands. Today, 172 countries around the world have signed it, and it has been in force in the Czech Republic since 1993 (we have been a contracting party since 1990).

What do you think a wetland is?

• the definition is broad: any area that is covered with water – temporarily (for example, only for a few of the wettest months of the year) or permanently, naturally or artificially, with flowing or stagnant water, fresh or salt

• at the same time, in practice, watercourses (rivers, streams) or large water bodies (lakes, bays) are not considered wetlands

• imagine a wide range of biotopes from waterlogged meadows through various peat bogs, springs, floodplain forests (waterlogged forests with streams) to littorals, i.e. shallow zones between land and water

To make it easier, we are adding a few photos of wetlands from our locations:

1/ "beaver" wetland near Maříž (Czech Canada)

2/ "V Lisovech" peatland (Vysočina Region)

3/ peatland near Jelení (Krušné Mountains)

4/ littoral zone of one of the restored ponds in Maříž

5/ wetland alder forest in Maříž

6/ flooded drainage ditch in Heřmaničky (Kokořínsko)

7/ waterlogged meadows in Maříž