Ramsar Criteria for Naming Wetlands of International Importance

"Ramsar" is an international convention signed in 1971 in the city of Ramsar, Iran, (below) to provide for international cooperation in the conservation of wetlands. The convention has really taken on a life of its own. Ramsar now includes almost 1900 sites in 160 countries, covering over 185 million hectares, or 457 million acres.

As with many global organizations, differences among nations require flexible or loose definitions, so many aspects of how Ramsar functions aren't super obvious at a glance. For one thing, you wonder how these sites get named. To be eligible to receive official designation as a Ramsar site, there is one fairly simple condition. That is, a site must be a wetland of international importance.

Fair enough. OK, so how do you know if a site would be of international significance? Glad you asked. Coincidentally, we just happen to have handy (borrowed from Ramsar's site) the most recent criteria for identifying wetlands of international importance, as follows...

Criteria for Identifying Wetlands of International Importance

Adopted by the 7th (1999) and 9th (2005) Meetings of the Conference of the Contracting Parties, superseding earlier Criteria adopted by the 4th and 6th Meetings of the COP (1990 and 1996), to guide implementation of Article 2.1 on designation of Ramsar sites.

Group A of the Criteria. Sites containing representative, rare or unique wetland types

Criterion 1: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it contains a representative, rare, or unique example of a natural or near-natural wetland type found within the appropriate biogeographic region.

Group B of the Criteria. Sites of international importance for conserving biological diversity

Criteria based on species and ecological communities

Criterion 2: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it supports vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered species or threatened ecological communities.
Criterion 3: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it supports populations of plant and/or animal species important for maintaining the biological diversity of a particular biogeographic region.
Criterion 4: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it supports plant and/or animal species at a critical stage in their life cycles, or provides refuge during adverse conditions.

Specific criteria based on waterbirds

Criterion 5: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it regularly supports 20,000 or more waterbirds.
Criterion 6: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it regularly supports 1% of the individuals in a population of one species or subspecies of waterbird.

Specific criteria based on fish

Criterion 7: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it supports a significant proportion of indigenous fish subspecies, species or families, life-history stages, species interactions and/or populations that are representative of wetland benefits and/or values and thereby contributes to global biological diversity.

Criterion 8: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it is an important source of food for fishes, spawning ground, nursery and/or migration path on which fish stocks, either within the wetland or elsewhere, depend.

Specific criteria based on other taxa

Criterion 9: A wetland should be considered internationally important if it regularly supports 1% of the individuals in a population of one species or subspecies of wetland-dependent non-avian animal species.