The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

The Annotated Ramsar List

The Annotated Ramsar List is also available free of charge from the Ramsar Secretariat as a 400-page spiral-bound book.

The Annotated Ramsar List

The List of Wetlands of International Importance

The Ramsar List was established in response to Article 2.1 of the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971), which reads:

Each Contracting Party shall designate suitable wetlands within its territory for inclusion in a List of Wetlands of International Importance, hereinafter referred to as "the List" which is maintained by the bureau [secretariat of the Convention] established under Article 8.

Wetlands included in the List acquire a new status at the national level and are recognized by the international community as being of significant value not only for the country, or the countries, in which they are located, but for humanity as a whole.

Full data submitted by the Parties for each of their Ramsar sites are entered in the Ramsar Sites Database, which is maintained by Wetlands International under contract with the Convention. Wetlands International makes this data available to the public in a number of searchable forms in its Ramsar Sites Information Service, http://www.wetlands.org/rsis.

The Convention establishes that "wetlands should be selected for the List on account of their international significance in terms of ecology, botany, zoology, limnology or hydrology." Over the years, the Conference of the Contracting Parties has adopted more specific criteria interpreting the Convention text, as well as an Information Sheet on Ramsar Wetlands and a Classification system of wetland type.

All issues pertaining to the Ramsar List were encapsulated in Resolution VII.11 adopted by the Conference of the Parties in May 1999 and entitled Strategic Framework and guidelines for the future development of the List of Wetlands of International Importance.

Everything in the Strategic Framework is founded upon this "Vision for the Ramsar List":

To develop and maintain an international network of wetlands which are important for the conservation of global biological diversity and for sustaining human life through the maintenance of their ecosystem components, processes and benefits/services.

The Convention's goal is to achieve Ramsar listing for as many wetlands throughout the world as meet the criteria of international importance; in the short term, the objective is to have at least 2,500 sites in the List, covering at least 250 million hectares, by COP10 in 2010. To bring this much of the world's wetland resource under the umbrella of Ramsar status, the Convention urges all States to join the Convention, if they have not already done so, and to make significant efforts to implement the systematic approach for the development of the List in each country as adopted under the Strategic Framework.

 The basic Ramsar List and the Annotated Ramsar List

The basic Ramsar List is kept up to date as new sites are designated. The printed Annotated List is published frequently but not with the same promptness. The latest version of the basic Ramsar List can be found in Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF formats on the Ramsar Web site at http://ramsar.org/index_list.htm or obtained from the Ramsar Secretariat (ramsar@ramsar.org). The Ramsar Sites Information Service, maintained by Wetlands International at http://www.wetlands.org/rsis/, makes available all of the original Ramsar Information Sheets in PDF format, and it is upon these RIS documents supplied by the national authorities in the Contracting Parties that the Ramsar site summary descriptions in this book are based.

The Annotated Ramsar List is kept up to date continuously on the Ramsar Web site at http://ramsar.org/profile_index.htm.

Suggestions for additions and corrections to the text entries are always welcome, but substantial revisions of data must be confirmed with the Administrative Authority in the relevant Contracting Party.

Acknowledgements

The first 800 text entries for the Annotated Ramsar List were first drafted in 1998 by Ms Robin Reilley, a consultant to the Ramsar Secretariat, based upon more thorough entries in the Directory of Wetlands of International Importance for those Ramsar sites which had been designated by that time. Additional contributions were made in 1999 by Bill Phillips, Alexander Belokurov, Parastu Mirabzadeh, Musonda Mumba, Flor de María Salvador Pérez, Taeko Takahashi, and Anett Zellei. Updates and descriptions of new Ramsar sites have been provided since then by Dwight Peck and the Assistants to the Regional Advisors.

Notes

Names of Parties and sites. The names of Contracting Parties employed by the Ramsar Convention follow the forms used by the United Nations. In terms of alphabetization, the principal counterintuitive names in English are the Democratic Republic of Congo under "D", the Republic of Korea under "R", and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia under "T". In principle, names of Ramsar sites follow exactly the form employed by the Contracting Parties on the Ramsar Information Sheets accompanying each new site designation; these, too, can frequently be counterintuitive, sometimes very counterintuitive (e.g., "The Dee Estuary" under "T").

Entry into force. Under the terms of the Ramsar Convention, the Convention enters into force for each new Contracting Party four months after the Party has completed its accession procedures with UNESCO and designated its obligatory first site(s). Thus for nearly every Contracting Party, there will be one or more Ramsar sites shown as having been designated four months prior to the Convention’s entry into force. (The exception is for a nation that deposits a declaration of succession to a former political entity [e.g., Ukraine to the former Soviet Union], in which case entry into force is normally dated from the date of that nation's independence.)

Montreux Record. The Montreux Record, established by Resolution 4.8 (1990), is the "record of Ramsar sites where changes in ecological character have occurred, are occurring or are likely to occur as a result of technological developments, pollution or other human interference" and is maintained by the Ramsar Bureau in consultation with the Contracting Parties concerned. Resolution 5.4 (1993) specified that the purpose of the Montreux Record is to identify priority sites for positive national and international conservation attention, including applications of the Ramsar Advisory Mission and allocation of resources available under financial mechanisms.

Transboundary Ramsar Sites. In some instances, Ramsar Contracting Parties have established their new and existing Ramsar sites as parts of Transboundary Ramsar Sites (TRS), meaning that an ecologically coherent wetland extends across national borders and the Ramsar site authorities on both or all sides of the border have formally agreed to collaborate in its management, and have notified the Secretariat of this intent. This is a cooperative management arrangement and not a distinct legal status for the Ramsar sites involved.

Dates. The short forms of dates follow the dd/mm/yy format: 31 December 1999 (December 31, 1999) is written as 31/12/99.

Site coordinates. The coordinates given for each Ramsar site are intended only to be approximate "center points" of the sites.

Standard abbreviations. ha = hectares (2.5 acres), .01 square kilometer; km = kilometers; m = meters

The Annotated Ramsar List has not been translated in its entirety, because of the prohibitive cost. However, in recent years many of the newly-added site descriptions have been translated into French and Spanish in the slightly-rearranged form of news items that are usually substantially identical to the Annotated List English entries upon which they were based. Where such translations exist elsewhere on this Web site, links are provided following each entry.

The Annotated Ramsar List

Table of Contents

For further information about the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, please contact the Ramsar Convention Secretariat, Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland (tel +41 22 999 0170, fax +41 22 999 0169, e-mail ). Updated 19 March 2008, Dwight Peck, Ramsar.