Three years into an ambitious wetland restoration project in East Africa, conservationist Julie Mulonga says she’s learned the value of small steps. The Source to Sea project set out to protect wetlands in the Rift Valley and mangroves along the Indian Ocean coastline at the same time as strengthening livelihoods and climate resilience. “We started with a big vision for the Source to Sea project,” says Mulonga, the East Africa director for Wetlands International, “but looking back, I think we might have aimed too big, too soon.” Launched in 2021, the project covers two vast ecoregions: the Rift Valley Lakes ecoregion, stretching from Lake Albert and the Ethiopian Highlands in the north, to Lake Tanganyika in the south; and the East African Mangrove ecoregion, extending from southern Somalia to Mozambique, including the Lamu seascape in Kenya, the Rufiji Delta in Tanzania, and the Zambezi River Delta in Mozambique. Tanzania’s Rufiji delta. Image by Olly Wright via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0) The Source to Sea project extends across Rift Valley lakes in Ethiopia and Uganda where this black-headed heron was photographed, south to Lake Tanganyika. It also stretches across a mangrove ecoregions that runs along the Indian Ocean coast from southern Somalia to the Rufiji and Zambezi river deltas in Tanzania and Mozambique. Image by Michael Jefferies via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0) The key project sites are in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. These include biodiversity hotspots like Ethiopia’s Abijata-Shalla Lakes National Park, a critical stopover for migratory birds and a designated…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Small steps towards larger goal of protecting East African wetlands first appeared on EnviroLink Network.