People around the world value wetlands for many reasons: as a source of water, grazing for animals, fish for food, as well as other materials or simply as a place to relax and enjoy nature. By monitoring the status of wetlands and their species, we ensure that these values are safeguarded and restored – for humans and nature alike.

Wetlands occur where water meets land. They include mangroves, peatlands and marshes, rivers and lakes, deltas, floodplains and flooded forests, rice-fields, and even coral reefs. Wetlands exist in every country and in every climatic zone, from the polar regions to the tropics, and from high altitudes to dry regions. Read more...

Wetlands are home to a rich abundance of animal and plant life. From tropical forests filled with dragonflies, orangutans, frogs, and tigers, to the Arctic, where migratory birds breed and marine mammals gather in summer and for migration, and from coastal wetlands teeming with playful dolphins, to drylands where wetlands provide a seasonal lifeline for species of all kinds.

From the gigantic Iguazu waterfalls of South America to the vast Arctic tundra, from mountain streams with giant salamanders to peat swamps filled with dazzling dragonflies, from waterholes where lions ambush antelope to mangroves full of mudskippers, fiddler crabs and dolphins, wetlands provide some of the world’s greatest nature spectacles.