Yesterday was World Wetlands Day, which occurs annually
on February 2
nd, and marks the date of the adoption of the
Convention on Wetlands on February 2, 1971 when environmentalists signed an
international agreement at the Ramsar Convention in Iran. Since then
Governments around the world have designated and protected over 2200 Ramsar sites, identifying them as wetlands of international importance.
Wetlands and biodiversity is the theme for 2020,
celebrating that wetlands are rich in biodiversity and are a habitat for a
great variety of plant and animal species. Whilst we might all be aware of
the loss of global biodiversity, wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate,
almost three times faster than forests, so we need action to reverse its loss.
With thanks to your support, either by buying our logs, cards or calendars,
booking us for talks and events, or making donations to the Friends of the
Lower Derwent Valley, the Friends have been able to safeguard a little bit more
of our international wetland resource. Last week they completed the purchase of
6.6 acres of lowland wet grassland on North Duffield Carrs – one of the last
blocks of land there still in private ownership. This land is now secured for
nature conservation, so that future generations can enjoy the thousands of
wintering birds, breeding birds, mammals, plants and invertebrates which use
the site over the year. There is still more to be done though - the land purchase
cost £20,000 and the Friends, who are now a registered charity, are keen to
crowd fund in order to replace their land acquisition fund to help purchase
more land. If you’d like to help then please follow the link below to their
Go Fund me page - https://www.gofundme.com/f/conserving-the-lower-derwent-valley.
Celebrating World Wetlands Day helps recognise the importance wetlands play in providing and safeguarding
biodiversity, as well as a host of other wide-ranging benefits (carbon storage,
flood storage, food production and public enjoyment). The Lower Derwent
Valley is protected by numerous international designations and is of international
importance – our ringing studies over the last 30 years have so far linked the
valley with 28 countries around the world, and we’ve recently heard about a few
of our ringed birds giving a flavour of this international flyway:
A Wigeon ringed at Bank Island in February 2018 was
recovered in the
Lebyazhevskiy
District of Russia in September last year – 4317km
to the east of the valley, making it one of our furthest Wigeon so far - possibly
on or near its breeding site.
Last year during the autumn influx of Redwing from Northern
Europe over 60 individuals were caught in the NNR base garden during November. Most of the them cleared out of
the area over Christmas and we wondered where they might have gone - by early
January one individual had made it 1730km to the south and into Portugal – a
distance covered in just 53 days.
We’ve also recently heard about a Reed
Warbler caught last summer at Wheldrake Ings with a Portuguese ring - it was
ringed in August 2018 at Paul do Taipal, Coimbra as a juvenile. Many thanks to our team of volunteers who spend many an hour collecting data and then submitting it to the BTO and WWT.
