STAFF REPORT KHI: IUCN Pakistan-funded Saving the Endangered Sea Turtles Project has organized the World Wetlands Day 2015 at Wetland Centre Sandspit, Karachi. The event was organized by IUCN in collaboration with WWF Pakistan. The theme of this year for World Wetland Day is “Wetlands for the Future”. The event was celebrated with the children from four local schools in the Sandspit area, members from the local fisher community and Moti Mala Women Tanzeem.
“Wetlands are considered as Worlds Supermarkets as they provide countless goods and services for the benefit of society such as, livelihoods for the dependent communities, food, fiber, fuel, clean air and clean drinking water,” Ghulam Qadir Shah, MFF National Coordinator, said on the occasion.
He said that wetlands act as habitat for fish, birds, nesting grounds for sea turtles and other biodiversity. He said that degradation of wetlands would directly impact the supply of these good and services.
He also said that the Sandspit and Hawksbay beaches are amongst the 11 most important turtle nesting grounds in the world, whereas, the mangroves growing along the Pakistans coast were a highly important wetland ecosystem in terms of their productivity.
Altaf Hussein, Manager Conservation-Sindh WWF, stressed that wetlands were an important source of clean water; however, increasing pollution had degraded the quality of our wetlands.