Saltpans and Ponds: Socio-Ecosystems Connecting Lives

The East Atlantic flyway is made up of a network of saltpans and coastal wetlands, and stretches from the Arctic, through Europe, all the way to South Africa. The flyway provides vital refuge, food and resting grounds for billions of birds migrating between their breeding and wintering grounds.

Coastal wetlands and saltpans have also been managed by people for thousands of years to produce salt, fish, seaweed and molluscs, providing local jobs and income, as well as being a fundamental cultural and ethnographic heritage of many countries. However, many sites were abandoned from the 1970s onwards due to a lack of profit and have since become endangered habitats.

Salarte and BirdLife have joined forces to help recover and promote wetlands of the East Atlantic Flyway, demonstrating that nature conservation and green economy can go hand in hand, and that protecting wildlife is in fact be a benefit to local income.

See the presentation