Field Trip Songor Ramsar site

A field trip will be organized to a mangrove site at the Songor Ramsar Site at Ada, an hour and a half drive from Accra to appreciate the various sources and types of information or data used for the management of the site, the tools and technologies being applied, land changes over time, mangrove restoration activities, community engagement for conservations and limitations among other interesting things happening at the site.

Songor Ramsar site, also a UNESCO Biosphere reserve is one of the protected wetlands situated along the eastern portion of Ghana’s 550km sandy coast. Although Ghana ratified the Ramsar Convention on 22nd June 1988, Songor was designated as a Ramsar conservation site on 14th August 1992. Songor is also one of the UNESCO Man and Biosphere reserves that were adopted on June 2011 in Dresden, Germany. Located between latitudes 06° 00’25’’N and 00° 19’E and 05°45’30’’N, 00° 41’40’’ E, Songor Ramsar and UNESCO Biosphere reserve occupies an area of 51,133.3 hectares.

Songor has unique ecological systems that support diverse life forms. The site has a flat landscape with interconnected serpentine creeks from the estuary. The sandy beach is smooth without cliffs. The lagoon provides feeding and roosting habitat for wintering birds from the months of November to March. There are huge expanses of reeds, sesuvium postulacastrum, paspalium viginatum, eleocharis mutata, etc. which are of ecological, socio-economic and cultural importance.

Info sources:

• http://aeda.gov.gh/departments/natural-resource-conservation/
• https://www.keybiodiversityareas.org/site/factsheet/6346