Habitat of the Year 2024 – WETLANDS
The Latvian Fund for Nature (LFN) has declared WETLANDS as the habitat of the year 2024. A wetland is an area that is excessively wet or covered with a shallow layer of water. Wetlands include floodplain meadows, fens, raised bogs, also coastal grasslands, and naturally flooded forests and other habitats where land and water meet, including artificial wetlands. This year, in honor of the habitat of the year, the Latvian Fund for Nature has published a large-format art photo calendar “WETLANDS” created by photographer Kristaps Kalns. The photo calendar portrays various wetland landscapes in connection with the feelings they create in each season.
‘To fully understand wetlands, it is important to remember that life originated in water, and wetlands are where land and water meet and mingle. That is the reason why wetlands are full of life. It has the conditions for the development and habitat of both terrestrial and aquatic species, as well as species that require floodplains. The North American swamps, the tropical mangrove forests, the lagoons – these are all world-famous wetlands. But just as important and special are the wetlands of Latvia – we need to appreciate their true value and understand that we need them more than we think’
Jānis Ķuze, board member of LFN.
Photo: K. Kalns
In 1971, the International Convention on Wetlands was adopted in Ramsar, Iran. The only international environmental convention dedicated to a particular ecosystem. Despite the global emphasis on wetlands already more than 50 years ago, they continue to disappear. Over the last 50 years, more than 35 percent of the world’s wetlands have disappeared, shrinking at three times the rate of forests. Historically and currently, wetland areas in Latvia have also been decreasing. One of the most important wetland habitats, floodplain meadows, has been preserved in less than 0.3% of the country’s land area.
Wetlands are a home to a wide variety of life forms – aquatic and terrestrial plants, moss, invertebrates, fish, reptiles, birds and also mammals. A significant proportion of all bird species found in Latvia are associated with wetlands as they need them as breeding, feeding, nesting or resting places. For example, Eurasian bitterns and cranes nest in wetlands, black storks and white-tailed eagles feed in them, and the geese rest while traveling through.
White-tailed eagle feeding in the wetland. Photo: J. Ķuze
Wetland plant species that everyone recognizes are reeds, cattails, sedges like cottongrass, callas like bog Arum, marsh Labrador tea and cranberries. Specific wetland species are, for example, fen Orchid and marsh Angelica, but the most colorful are Globeflowers, Siberian irises, shingled Gladiolus, strawberry Clovers and bird’s-eye Primroses.
But wetlands are not just important for biodiversity – they provide essential ecosystem services that are vital for our existence. The three most important are flood regulation, water purification and carbon sequestration. Wetlands act as sponges that collect floodwaters and then slowly release them, thus preventing different areas from being flooded. They are also natural filters that purify water from pollution. Wetlands effectively capture and store carbon, thereby reducing the greenhouse gas impact, and are thus one of the mechanisms for mitigating climate change. For example, raised bogs with their accumulated peat are one of nature’s most efficient carbon storages.
A study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre analyzing the costs and benefits of different flood risk mitigation measures in EU countries and the UK was published this year in the journal Nature. The researchers concluded that the maintenance and establishment of water catchment areas like floodplain meadows and other wetlands, are among the most cost-effective flood risk mitigation measures in terms of benefits versus costs.
Latvia has six wetland areas of international importance – Pape wetland complex, Lake Engure, Ķemeri National Park, Teiči and Pelečāre bogs, Northern bogs and Lubāns wetland complex. Small wetlands are just as important – beaver made wetlands, small ponds, wet corners of meadows, wet, unmanaged depressions in intensively cultivated fields.
In agriculture, wetlands, such as marsh meadows, are a major challenge because they are difficult to manage and are therefore either drained or left unmanaged. One of the goals of the Latvian Fund for Nature is to demonstrate that wetlands can also be used economically, and this is also demonstrated by several of our projects in which extensive management of floodplain meadows is carried out in cooperation with farmers.
‘In Latvia the wetlands are not very well known, so this year we invite you to get to know them. The calendar, created in collaboration with photographer Kristaps Kalns, is the first initiative of our Year of the Wetlands to show how wetlands can inspire art. This year, we’re also going to be collaborating with ‘Stenders’, a cosmetics company, to create a joint initiative to support wetland restoration. In spring and summer, we will invite people to wetland landscape tours and a special campaign will be run to teach everyone how to build their own mini-wetland and teach about its benefits, and, of course, we will continue to work with farmers to restore and manage the wetlands’
Jānis Ķuze, board member of LFN
The large-format art calendar WETLANDS can be purchased at the Latvian Fund for Nature by contacting ldf@ldf.lv
LFN has been designating habitat of the year since 2015 to draw public attention to the importance of preserving biodiversity. The habitat of the year 2015 was biologically valuable grasslands, 2016 – reeds, 2017 – farmsteads (Latvian – ‘lauku sētas’), 2018 – large trees (Latvian – ‘dižkoki’), 2019 – old or natural boreal forests, 2020 – park-like meadows, 2021 – river straits and natural river sections, 2022 – the city, 2023 – dead and fallen trees (Latvian – ‘kritala’).