River Niger Wetlands of International Importance Protected

GLAND, Switzerland, August 18, 2004 (ENS) - The government of the West African country of Niger has designated three new wetland sites for protection as wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, according to the convention's secretariat in Gland. One of the newly protected wetlands along the River Niger shelters the only viable West African giraffe population.

The three new sites cover more than three quarters of a million hectares (2,895 square miles) along the Niger River and two of its former tributary valleys from the north.

Abou Bamba, the Ramsar Secretariat's senior advisor for Africa, was able to present Niger’s minister of the environment with site diplomas for the three new sites at a meeting hosted by French President Jacques Chirac in Paris in April. Now that the datasheets for the three sites have been thoroughly gone over by the Africa team in the Secretariat, the new areas can be added to the List of Wetlands of International Importance.

Landlocked Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, and its agrarian and subsistence-based economy is often disrupted by the extended droughts common to the Sahel region of Africa. Still, the government has been taking vigorous steps in recent years to conserve its wetland resources, with the assistance of WWF International’s Living Waters Programme.

The three newly protected sites are Dallol Bosso, Dallol Maouri, and Zone humide du moyen Niger II in the Niger floodplain.

Dallol Bosso in Dosso department is a system of seasonal watercourses and permanent pools in the old north-south valley of a long inactive branch of the River Niger, associated with 775 kilometer (480 mile) long depression running southward from Mali.

One of the few remaining giraffes in Niger (Photo courtesy Sandra Keller und Roger Maneth)

The site supports numerous fish species at different stages of their life cycles, and certain species migrate towards the Niger during the winter season, enriching the biodiversity there.

Chief human uses of the area include irrigation agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing, and the extraction of the carbonate salt, natron. Natron was used to preserve Egyptian mummies and today is used as a preservative, cleanser and cosmetic salt scrub.

The effects of desertification in the region, including uncertain rains, sand encroachment, and inadequate groundwater recharge, give cause for concern, the Ramsar Secretariat says, and overgrazing and soil impoverishment through overcultivation are seen as potential threats.

The area is adjacent to Parc National du W and part of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of that name.

The second newly protected wetland is Dallol Maouri in the Gaya department. This former north-south tributary of the Niger River along the frontier with Nigeria in the southwest, is now a complex of permanent saline-alkaline pools and seasonal streams and creeks with what the Secretariat calls "an exceptional complex of vegetation" including the Palmyra palm, Borassus aethiopum, and African doum palm, Hyphaene thebaïca.

Nine ethnic groups live in this region, and rainy-season agriculture and market gardens, salt extraction, fishing, forestry, and grazing are the principal means of livelihood.

A sustainable tourism potential is seen, and a local research program, financed by Switzerland, is studying potential development in sustainable livelihoods. As elsewhere in the region, the effects of desertification are the most worrying threats to the site, the Secretariat says.

Zone humide du moyen Niger, with birds, March 2001. (Photo by Anada Tiéga courtesy Ramsar)

The area is known for the presence of hippo grass echinochloa stagnina, a quality forage plant, and the grass anthephora nigritana which provides habitat for thousands of waterbirds as well as pasturage.

Threatened species include the white-tailed mongoose, the pale fox, vulpes pallida, and the African manatee, Trichechus senegalensis. The permanent pools provide refuge for several fish species that have disappeared elsewhere along the river.

The hydrological regime is characterized by a period of flooding of four to five months, beginning in August with local torrential rains and again in November with floods coming from upstream.

The rich alluvual soils provide agricultural and pastoral livelihoods, but unwise practices, as well as invasions of the cattail, typha australis, present potential threats. The land is largely state owned but the population has age-old rights of usage. Denis Landenbergue and the WWF Living Waters team deserve obeisant thanks for helping to facilitate the data collection and designation of these three new sites, which help enormously to patch together under the Ramsar umbrella the mosaic of the Niger River Basin and its vital wetland resources.