Habitat of the Year 2024 – WETLANDS 

The Latvian Fund for Nature has nominated WETLANDS as the 2024 Habitat of the Year. A wetland is an area that is waterlogged or covered with a shallow layer of water. Wetlands include floodplains, grass marshes, raised bogs, coastal grasslands and naturally flooded, waterlogged forests and other habitats where land and water meet, including man-made wetlands. 

“To understand the nature of a wetland, it is important to remember that life originated in water, and that a wetland is where land and water meet and intermingle. That is why a wetland is full of life. It has the conditions for both terrestrial and aquatic species to thrive and live, as well as species that need places that are flooded. North American mudflats, tropical mangroves, lagoons – these are all world-famous wetlands. But just as important and special are Latvia’s wetlands – we need to recognize their true value and realize that we need them more than we think,” says Jānis Ķuze, Council Member of the Latvian Fund for Nature. 

In 1971, an international convention on wetlands was adopted in Ramsar, Iran – the only international environmental convention dedicated to a specific ecosystem. Despite the importance of wetlands having been so strongly emphasized at a global level more than 50 years ago, they continue to disappear. In the last 50 years, more than 35% of the world’s wetlands have disappeared, and their area is declining at a rate three times faster than that of forests. In Latvia too, wetland areas are declining historically and currently. Floodplain meadows, one of the most important wetland habitats, remain less than 0.3% of Latvia’s territory. 

Wetlands are home to many different forms of life – aquatic and terrestrial plants, mosses, invertebrates, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals. A significant proportion of all bird species found in Latvia are associated with wetlands – as breeding, feeding or migration resting sites. For example, the Eurasian bittern and the Common crane nest in wetlands, the Black stork and the White-tailed eagle forage, and geese rest when passing through.

Wetland plants that almost everyone recognizes are reeds, sedges, cottongrass, arum lily and cranberries, or specific species such as, for example, fen orchid and marsh angelica, or vibrantly coloured globeflower, Siberian iris, shingled gladiolus, strawberry clover and bird’s-eye primrose.

But these habitats are not just important for natural diversity – they provide essential ecosystem services that are vital to our existence. Three of the most important are flood regulation, water purification and carbon storage. Wetlands act like sponges, storing floodwaters and then slowly releasing them, protecting other areas and us from inundation. They are also natural filters that clean water of pollution. Wetlands effectively sequester and store carbon, thereby reducing the greenhouse effect and thus being one of the mechanisms for mitigating climate change. For example, raised bogs with their peat are one of nature’s most effective carbon sinks. 

This year, the journal Nature published a study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre analyzing the costs and benefits of different flood risk reduction measures in EU countries and the UK. The researchers concluded that maintaining and creating “water retention” areas, including floodplains and other wetlands, are among the most cost-effective flood risk reduction measures in terms of benefits versus costs. 

There are six wetlands of international importance in Latvia – Pape Wetlands, Engure Lake, Ķemeri National Park, Ziemeļu bog, Lubāns wetland, Teiči and Pelečāre bogs – but small wetland areas are also important – beaver ponds, wet meadow corners, wet unmanaged depressions in intensively farmed fields. 

Wetlands, such as wet grasslands, are a major challenge for agriculture because they are difficult to manage and are either drained or left unmanaged. One of the aims of the Latvian Fund for Nature is to show that wetlands can also be used economically, as demonstrated by a number of the Fund’s projects that extensively manage floodplain meadows in cooperation with farmers.