Qualla: Wetlands International https://qualla.com/wetlands-international en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:34 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/p/wetlands-international-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Wetlands International https://qualla.com/wetlands-international Wetlands International: Introduction https://qualla.com/wetlands-international/ Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown, Public domain. Once a year, in 143 countries, volunteers walk to the edge of a marsh, raise binoculars, and count. The tally goes into a spreadsheet maintained by a small organization headquartered in the Dutch town of Ede, just east of Utrecht. The count has run, in some form, since 1937. It is one of the longest continuous citizen-science projects on Earth, and the people who coordinate it - Wetlands International - have built nearly nine decades of work on a simple premise: that the world's swamps, bogs, mangroves, and floodplains are not waste ground waiting to be drained. They are the planet's plumbing. If they fail, everything downstream fails with them.

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Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown | Public domain

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/p/wetlands-international-wp/u1hp-wetlands-international-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Wetlands International: From Wildfowl Inquiry to Global Network https://qualla.com/wetlands-international/ Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown, Public domain. It started in 1937 as the International Wildfowl Inquiry - a few European ornithologists worried about declining duck numbers. The name kept changing as the mission widened. The International Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau came next, then sister organizations in Asia and ...

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Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown | Public domain

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/p/wetlands-international-wp/u1hp-wetlands-international-from-wildfowl-inquiry-to-global-network.mp3 0:06 2 full Wetlands International: Carbon Hidden in Peat https://qualla.com/wetlands-international/ Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown, Public domain. Peatlands occupy only about three percent of the world's land surface but hold roughly twice as much carbon as all the planet's forests combined. Drain a peatland and the dead plant matter that has been waterlogged for millennia starts to oxidize, and a quiet swamp becomes a fast...

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Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown | Public domain

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/p/wetlands-international-wp/u1hp-wetlands-international-carbon-hidden-in-peat.mp3 0:06 3 full Wetlands International: The Ramsar Game https://qualla.com/wetlands-international/ Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown, Public domain. On the high Tibetan plateau, the Ruoergai marshes act as a giant sponge between the Himalayas and the Chinese lowlands, storing glacial meltwater that eventually feeds both the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. For years, peat was being mined out of the marsh and the drainage canals wer...

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Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown | Public domain

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/p/wetlands-international-wp/u1hp-wetlands-international-the-ramsar-game.mp3 0:06 4 full Wetlands International: Coasts, Drylands, and the Inner Niger https://qualla.com/wetlands-international/ Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown, Public domain. The same organization studying frozen Tibetan peat also works the other end of the climate spectrum. In Mali, on the Inner Niger Delta - one of the great seasonal wetlands of West Africa - the focus is livelihoods. Pastoralists, fishers, and rice farmers all depend on the river's...

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Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown | Public domain

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/p/wetlands-international-wp/u1hp-wetlands-international-coasts-drylands-and-the-inner-niger.mp3 0:06 5 full Wetlands International: The Census of Birds https://qualla.com/wetlands-international/ Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown, Public domain. The International Waterbird Census now spans over 25,000 sites in more than 100 countries and has been running for nearly sixty years. Outside North America - where the Audubon Christmas Bird Count covers similar ground - it is the largest continuous dataset on migratory waterbir...

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Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, photographer not specified or unknown | Public domain

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/p/wetlands-international-wp/u1hp-wetlands-international-the-census-of-birds.mp3 0:06 6 full