📰 Wetland News - May 24, 2024
Your latest briefing on wetland and water issues.
Wetland round-up
- Keep up-to-date with the latest wetland and water related news, research and jobs. If you’d like to receive regular updates on all things wetland, please subscribe to this newsletter.
🧾 Wetland news & research 🧪
Mediterranean wetland birds threatened by rising sea levels
A new study has found that by 2100, one-third to one-half of the coastal wetlands in eight Mediterranean countries could be partially or completely submerged. Such a rise in sea level would endanger many wetland birds, including the iconic pink flamingo.
Computer game hopes to inspire a love for the wetlands
A fantastic story! A computer game called, Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge, has been developed which aims to encourage players to care about wetlands and their biodiversity. It’s not being made as an educational package but simply a game, using the collection of cute frogs to make it fun. However, according to the developers you cannot progress through the levels without restoring the wetlands: they even have a carbon capture gauge and a biodiversity score for the habitats. The more you read about the game the better it gets! How wonderful that a company is making a game, that is first and foremost a game, but it has a real message behind it and even some science. I’m not a computer gamer at all, but if I was this would be one to play!
Carbon capture project to turn Cambridgeshire reserve into peatland
The project hopes to lock up more than 4,000 tonnes of carbon in peat soil by creating a wetland. Speechley’s Farm in the Great Fen, Cambridgeshire, UK, was bought by the county's Wildlife Trust to help preserve soil and support wildlife.
Old lead mine metal pollution to be cleaned up with treatment wetlands
Always good to see constructed treatment wetlands being used to tackle water pollution. This scheme is being run by the UK’s Coal Authority (who are great users of treatment wetlands), the Environment Agency, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to remove metals leaching from an old lead mine near Keswick in Cumbria.
More than half of all mangrove ecosystems at risk of collapse by 2050
More than half of the world’s mangrove ecosystems are at risk of collapse, according to the first global mangrove assessment for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Ecosystems - the global standard for measuring the health of ecosystems.
Unfortunately this is a rather sobering report, especially when it gives some of the figures on what this loss would mean. For instance, 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon would be lost and at least 2.1 million lives would be put at risk from coastal flooding.
Sorry for the rather depressing story to end on - just read the computer game story again to get another dose of positivity!
🗳 Wetlands in politics
On Wednesday, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, called a General Election for July 4, 2024. So we’ll now be entering six weeks of campaigning, with all the parties laying out their plans and visions for the future of the country.
Nature, climate change and the environment is likely to feature - to some degree - in all the parties’ plans (at least it’s hoped so!). However, it will be interesting to see if wetlands are specifically mentioned by any of the parties in the coming weeks. I certainly hope they are, as they are the ultimate Nature-based Solution, and key to addressing so many of the environmental issues we face.
If you’re involved in politics, or speak to a politician on the campaign trail, please bring up the importance of wetlands in the future of our country.
💰 Wetland jobs
Peatlands Project Manager - Shropshire Wildlife Trust
Shropshire Wildlife Trust has secured funding from Shropshire Council and DEFRA to deliver Natural Flood Management (NFM) measures in the peat dominated catchment of the River Perry. The successful candidate will be directly responsible for the successful delivery of the ‘Perry and Peatlands’ project, will look after discrete elements of larger projects and will oversee a number of other small and medium size projects delivered by other members of the team.
A member of the wider Rivers Trust movement, Welsh Dee Trust is a small independent charity working to restore the brooks, streams and rivers of the Dee catchment for both wildlife and people. The intern will support Welsh Dee Trust staff in the delivery of the It Shouldn’t Be In The Dee programme.
Get in-touch 📢
If you’d like to get in-touch please follow Dr Christian Dunn on Twitter/X (@christiandunn) or Instagram (@drchristiandunn), or email c.dunn@bangor.ac.uk.
If you have an image, news item, research item, or job you’d like to share in this newsletter, please get in-touch.
