Ireland's Wetlands and Why We Should Care - Tobias Salathé of the UN Ramsar Convention

24th February 2023

Coastwatch's Karin Dubsky and Toibias Salathe, senior advisor to the UN Ramsar Wetland Convention, at Booterstown Marsh, Dublin

Ireland has 45 fragile flooded habitats which are protected under a UN Convention named after a city on the Caspian Sea.

The Ramsar Convention was signed in the city in 1971, and international participation has gradually grown to 172 countries.

Ireland has 45 such designated areas under the convention in bogs, marshes, ponds and lakes, rivers, wet woodlands/grasslands, fens, estuaries and coastal lagoons.

Booterstown Nature Reserve on Dublin Bay is a unique home to many protected species Photo: Wikicommons

“Time to restore” was the theme of this year’s UN World Wetlands Day, and Tobias Salathé, senior advisor to the UN Ramsar Convention, marked it at an event in Wexford hosted by Coastwatch Ireland.

Afterwards, Salathé and Coastwatch’s Karin Dubsky spoke to Wavelengths at Booterstown Marsh in Dublin. Salathé, an ornithologist, explained what the convention is all about and why we should care, and we began with Karin Dubsky explaining what we were all looking at.

Afloat.ie · Wetland Ambassador Tobias Salathé of the UN Ramsar Convention

Published in Wavelength Podcast

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wetlands

About The Author

Lorna Siggins

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Lorna Siggins is a print and radio reporter, and a former Irish Times western correspondent. She is the author of Search and Rescue: True stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Loss of R116 (2022); Everest Callling (1994) on the first Irish Everest expedition; Mayday! Mayday! (2004); and Once Upon a Time in the West: the Corrib gas controversy (2010). She is also co-producer with Sarah Blake of the Doc on One "Miracle in Galway Bay" which recently won a Celtic Media Award

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