AfricaPress-Tanzania: KAGERA Regional Administrative Secretary (RAS), Prof Faustin Kamuzora, has appealed for joint efforts to protect wetlands for the benefit of future generations.
He advised the government to establish a special department that will supervise and protect wetlands.
He made the appeal recently, while addressing workers under the Ministry of Water at a meeting held in Bukoba Municipal Council attended by Water Minister Jumaa Aweso.
Tanzania currently has 4 sites designated as wetlands of international importance (Ramsar Sites), with a surface area of 4,868,424 hectares.
Wetlands are important features in the landscape that provide numerous beneficial services for people and for fish and wildlife.
Some of these services, or functions, include protecting and improving water quality, providing fish and wildlife habitats, storing floodwaters and maintaining surface water flow during the dry season.
These functions are a result of the unique natural characteristics of wetlands. Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, comparable to rain forests and coral reefs.
An immense variety of species of microbes, plants, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish and mammals can be part of a wetland ecosystem.
Climate, landscape shape (topology), geology and the movement and abundance of water help determine plants and animals that inhabit each wetland.
Complex and dynamic relationships among the organisms inhabiting the wetland environment are called food webs.
Wetlands can be thought of as “biological supermarkets.” They provide great volumes of food that attract many animal species. These animals use wetlands as part of or all of their life cycle.
Dead plant leaves and stems break down in water to form small particles of organic materials called “detritus.”
These enriched materials feed many small aquatic insects, shellfish and small fish that are food for larger predatory fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals.
The functions of a wetland and the values of these functions to humans depend on a complex set of relationships between wetlands and other ecosystems in the watershed.
A watershed is a geographic area in which water, sediments and dissolved materials drain from higher elevations to a common low-lying outlet or basin a point on a larger stream, lake, underlying aquifer or estuary.
