The White-winged Flufftail, one of the rarest and most threatened water birds in Africa, has been found at Middelpunt Nature Reserve (MNR), establishing that a breeding population exists outside Ethiopia. As a result, MNR has been declared South Africa’s 29th Ramsar Site under the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance.
Sarothrura ayresi (White-winged Flufftail), 1877, by John Gerrard Keulemans. Courtesy: Alamy
The site is in the Mpumalanga Drakensberg Strategic Water Source Area (SWSA), which has a freshwater valley bottom wetland and experiences high rainfall.
‘This further indicates how important it is to conserve and protect our country’s wetlands, whose unique environmental features not only provide clean water through their natural filtration systems but also because they provide habitats to a variety of species, including migratory birds,’ said the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy.
BirdLife South Africa won the AEWA waterbird conservation award in the institutional category at the AEWA Meeting of Parties in Budapest, Hungary, in September 2022, in recognition of the conservation efforts of BirdLife South Africa and the Middelpunt Wetland Trust (a trust established for conserving the White-winged Flufftail in 1994).
The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) is an intergovernmental treaty dedicated to conserving migratory waterbirds and their habitats. South Africa has been a contracting party to AEWA since 2002. DFFE established a national White-winged Flufftail Working Group and has been working closely with BirdLife South Africa on implementing key objectives and activities detailed in the AEWA International Single Species Action Plan to aid the conservation of this Critically Endangered species.
Read more about the White-winged Flufftail conservation and research project.
MNR is also home to numerous other endangered and endemic species, including the blue crane, secretary bird, African grass owl and Denham’s bustard.
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