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Salinas - no coastal wetlands means no salt on your table

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Salinas – or salt pans – are unique coastal wetland landscapes. They’re part of the cultural heritage of the Mediterranean: since time immemorial, salt has been produced through the natural evaporation of saltwater from the sea and coastal lagoons. Salt production shares some central features with agriculture: it’s an activity based on the harvesting of natural resources, which has developed over centuries and has gradually evolved into a modern efficient industry.

Salt production has been widespread in the Mediterranean, a fact reflected by its many salinas. These are an example of the complexity of Mediterranean landscapes, in which human, cultural and natural features are intimately linked and reciprocally dependent. Across the world, a variety of saltpans and sites used to produce salt are disappearing, mainly due to changes in society. Salinas, however, are also important for nature conservation. These heavily modified sites have become areas of high biological value. In Montenegro, the Ulcinj Salina is one of the most important stopovers for migrating birds along the Adriatic Flyway, and it’s also a major nesting, wintering and roosting spot. The salt works, set up in this manmade wetland in the 1930s, ensured a good life for local workers and birds alike. But then after more than 80 years, the salt works were closed down – and every benefit they offered looked like it would be lost. At least, that was the case until a group of experts came together, determined to #SaveSalina…
The Ulcinj Salina, Montenegro The saltpans at Ulcinj are among the most important in the whole region. They’re the last stop-off for birds migrating across the Adriatic, and they also provide crucial nesting, wintering and roosting grounds for many others – more than 250 species have been recorded at Ulcinj, including flamingos, black-winged stilts and Dalmatian pelicans. The saltpans are also home to many endangered fish, amphibians, reptiles and saline plants. The salt works at Ulcinj were set up in 1935, producing up to 40,000 tonnes a year at their peak and providing more than 400 jobs. For decades, the salina was also one of the main sources of income for the local community. “When we were growing up, we children always wanted to work in the salina. We loved it, because through the work that Dad did we had a high standard of living, even though there were many of us. So it was always the salina which addressed our needs,” says Mujo Taffa, a former water pump operator at Ulcinj Salina. But then the salt works were privatised in 2005, and systematically run down. The salt harvest was stopped in 2013 and the remaining workers dismissed, and the site was allowed to deteriorate as legally questionable efforts were made to sell it and construct a luxury hotel resort with golf courses and a marina. Gradually, the dykes and channels that make up the complex wetland system ran into disrepair, and the unique character of the habitat and its ecological processes became threatened by fresh water infiltrating the saltpans. As a result, the salt basins began to dry out, destroying the wetland habitat the birds had come to depend on. As it became clear that the salina was ceasing to provide ecological benefits, EuroNatur Foundation and its partners BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, Center for Protection and Research of Birds (CZIP), Dr. Martin Schneider-Jacoby Association (MSJA) and Tour du Valat started fighting for the protection of the vital wetland site. They launched the high-profile #SaveSalina campaign, an initiative to restore the site to its former state which operates at local, regional and international levels and which includes legal, political and communication actions. After years of work the sustained campaign finally won a landmark victory in June 2019, when the saltpans were declared a national protected area in recognition of their ecological and cultural value; then in a further major boost Ulcinj Salina was added to the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance. Today there’s hope for the future once more. In the words of Zenepa Lika, Founder of the Dr Martin Schneider-Jacoby Association in Montenegro, “In the last 80 areas, this place became an important bird area, rich in biodiversity, but this was threatened in recent years. Now we are on Montenegrin state-owned land, and that means we’re never alone, there are a lot of organizations behind us: we can work together to save the Ulcinj Salina.”  Multimedia materials Videos about Ulcinj Salinahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey1K4YsDDkM&list=PLJuXLs2ICWLfSpJ6JlnuneOTMnWWmo30s&index=2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV2J_bD3tdU&list=PLJuXLs2ICWLfnoP7mp2k9YJwp5pNEglZH&index=5https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs1hcnLi7Cs&list=PLJuXLs2ICWLfnoP7mp2k9YJwp5pNEglZH&index=6
View of the former Ulcinj salina's plant, Montenegro ©MedWet/C.Amico
 Background information: the importance of wetlands in the Mediterranean Despite the pressures they continue to experience, Mediterranean wetlands remain hugely important, and they provide vital benefits (known as ‘ecosystem services’) to people and economies across the region. Natural and human-made wetlands in the Mediterranean basin are estimated to cover about 0.15-0.22 million km2, which is about 1.1-1.5% of the world’s total wetland area. Almost one-quarter (around 23%) of Mediterranean wetlands are now human-made (such as rice fields, reservoirs, saltpans and oases) – a much higher percentage than the global average of around 12%. The largest areas of wetlands are in Egypt, France, Turkey and Algeria, which together hold about two-thirds of the total Mediterranean wetlands area. Given the arid or semi-arid nature of much of the region, percentages of national surface areas covered by wetlands are generally small, ranging from a little over 8% in Tunisia to less than 1% in eight countries, mostly in the Middle East and North Africa. All these wetlands are of great importance to people’s livelihoods and wellbeing, and for maintaining biological diversity. Wetlands in the Mediterranean Basin provide many and varied benefits  to the human population, as the second edition of the Mediterranean Wetlands Outlook report clearly demonstrates. People harvest wetland-dependent plants, hunt and fish in wetlands for food, and use wetlands for grazing animals. Wetlands in increasingly dry regions such as the Mediterranean are particularly important for the sustainable management of water resources, in terms of both quality and quantity. They help to provide and purify the water which Mediterranean people depend on for drinking, for industry and for energy production, as well as for irrigated agriculture. Mediterranean wetlands, particularly coastal wetlands, have a key role to play in mitigating and adapting to climate change. They are highly effective carbon sinks; and they protect against extreme weather events, absorbing floods and buffering against coastal erosion and storm surges, while providing water in droughts. Conversely, draining wetlands or reducing their water resources can result in the release into the atmosphere of large amounts of stored carbon. The diverse benefits delivered by wetlands are of huge economic value. Each year, losing coastal wetland costs $ 7200 billion globally. Much of the value of wetlands lies in their delivery of multiple water-related benefits – managing water quantity and quality and buffering extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and coastal storm surges. But conversion of natural ecosystems, including wetlands, to other land-uses is progressively reducing the value of the benefits they provide, at a global rate of US$4.3–20.2 trillion per year. The Wetland-Based Solutions project is working for a more effective conservation of these crucial habitats. Through the protection and restoration of key wetlands, the project aims to use coastal wetlands as key assets for nature-based solutions to counteract anthropogenic impacts, in particular climate change. Wetland-Based Solutions is a collaboration between 30 expert wetland partners from 10 countries, with the funding and support of the MAVA Foundation. They have come together and built a ground-breaking initiative to save, restore and sustainably manage Mediterranean coastal wetlands, for people and planet alike. 

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