Talk:List of Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance

Austria
The wikipedia site "Lake Neusiedl" mentions this lake (including the "Seewinkel" wetland) as a Ramsar site. A.Kracher (talk) 16:39, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

UK
Any idea why the UK is missing? Debnigo 18:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

adding countries
I took the liberty of editing the page adding the country of Romania with one entry, the Danube Delta. There are 4 more others in Romania on the ramsar list, but this is the most important, which it seems..wasn't here. I don't know if the others should also be listed, but anyone who wants too see more in Romania can click on the link with ramsar on the end of the page.

Numaru7 03:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

formatting
I think the country lists should keep to the same format - name of site and area in sq km, in alphabetical order. I'll reformat the naughty ones unless anyone has strong views against. Bogbumper (talk) 20:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

UK section
Since when is Cyprus in the UK? Surely it's an independent country!! Also, I would strongly suggest that the United Kingdom should be divided into its constituent countries (Wales, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland) and the appropriate Ramsar sites listed under the individual country headings, for ease of reference. thomani9
 * See Sovereign Base Areas. -- Beland (talk) 16:26, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * But to answer the question: 1878-1960 (100%), and 1960 onwards (2.75%) Cyprus is currently an independent country, except for a tiny portion (2.75%), which is an internationally recognised British Overseas Territory, and an unrecognised Turkish occupation in the northern portion of the island. The wetlands near Akrotiri are at the southernmost point in Cyprus; they are within the British 2.75%. I am not sure about the Lanarca Salt Lake. ChrisJBenson (talk) 01:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

File too large
See Article size, especially because this file takes a long time to load using lower speed access. Perhaps it could be divide into contries. Then sortable lists for each could be added without it getting extremely large. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.130.155.82 (talk) 17:58, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree the article is becoming too large. However country listings already exist (see Ramsar sites), so I'd suggest splitting this article up in listings by continent instead. - Arjuno (talk 19:41, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Continents makes sense as a next step, however as there are 1,855 sites there would be still to many on a page if the list is complete. So maybe subcontinets. - Elekhh (talk) 09:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * For now continent division seems appropriate. --sulmues (talk) 21:29, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

As discussed, organisation by continent is appropriate, especially as organisation by country is already available via the cat sytsem - Category:Ramsar sites. The readable prose in the list is not heavy - moving it onto different pages will not make it easier to read or navigate, but will make it slightly more difficult - as it stands all the wetlands can be browed and found on the one page. Even though it looks long, it is not text or media heavy and so shouldn't be a problem. As such I don't see a split being justified.  SilkTork  *YES! 21:53, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Something's rotten in Africa
I had to come to this page, and 57 years of academia to learn that the home of Hans Christian Andersen, the Little Mermaid, and Shakespeare's Hamlet, Denmark is in Africa. Who knew? ChrisJBenson (talk) 01:30, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

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United States
The "United States" section of this article needs to be collated with List of Ramsar sites in the United States. Otr500 (talk) 18:05, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

October 2021
Is this list about Wetlands of International Importance or signatories to the Ramsar Convention? M.Bitton (talk) 20:59, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This article is a list of "Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance", as so designated under the Ramsar Convention. Wetlands are added to the list when they are designated as such by a contracting party to the convention, and the sites you moved are on the list because they were added to it by the government of Morocco; you can see them listed on the Ramsar Sites Information Service here as sites designated to the list by Morocco. I don't want to assume too much, but the List of Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance is not an appropriate forum for, e.g., advocating a particular view of the disputed political status of Western Sahara. Whether the SADR is or is not a sovereign state, it wasn't the party that added those sites to this list. -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 22:26, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no idea why you're mentioning SADR and I don't want to assume too much either, so I'll just stick to the facts. The article doesn't mention the signatories. I looked at their map too and I could see that those sites are indeed in Western Sahara (this is a geographical fact); and since I also know that the addition of those sites by Morocco is disputed, my choice was to either: add a small explanation to the section, add footnotes to the concerned entries or create a separate section for them that simply mentions the territory. I opted for the last option since it seemed like the least misleading way of presenting the information to the readers (after all, this is about Wetlands). Which one would you prefer? M.Bitton (talk) 00:02, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It is a "geographical fact" that those sites are in the region sometimes called Western Sahara, which Morocco refers to as its Southern Provinces; however, the headings you added "Western Sahara" to are not the names of regions but of sovereign states who are contracting parties to the convention; and, to reiterate, whether the SADR is or is not a sovereign state, it isn't the state that added those sites to this list. This Wikipedia article does indeed "mention the signatories" to the Ramsar Convention, because (as I've now pointed out three times) the 170 level-3 headings in this list reflect the 170 contracting parties to the Ramsar Convention who have designated Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance under the convention (Vanuatu and Angola have acceded to the convention but have yet to designate any sites, which is why they don't appear ((yet)) in this list). That is how this list is organized. This is, incidentally, also the answer to a question asked higher on this page, "Why don't we break the UK up into its constituent 'countries' for ease of reading?" The sections of this list are not "countries"; they are the contracting parties to the Ramsar Convention. The minutes from the 59th standing committee meeting you linked do indeed point out that the political status of the sites in Western Sahara has been disputed by the government of Algeria, referencing the UN's List of Non-Self-Governning Territories. (It also then notes that a similar dispute exists surrounding site 1077 in the disputed Chagos Archipelago; the fact that only the dispute in Western Sahara seems to interest you is one reason why it seemed to me that perhaps your real goal here was to make a statement about the Western Sahara conflict?) If you read on, to item 14 on page 3 of that document, you'll see that it also notes that the secretariat of the convention "has no jurisdiction to either add or delete sites from the List. Rather, this is the sole province of the Contracting Parties...". A site appears on this list because one of the contracting parties has added it to the list. Neither the Ramsar Convention secretariat nor Wikipedia editors have the authority to decide what country we feel that a particular site "ought" to be considered to be part of. As for our options for how to proceed with this article, you didn't mention one notable option: to not burden this article (which, after all, is about wetlands) with lengthy political disclaimers or tendentious headings that appear to take sides in ongoing international conflicts. If you believe that it's necessary for Wikipedia to bring up these conflicts in this article, then I think the most appropriate place would be in a section of its own, about the secretariat's position on the sites in disputed territories, at the end of the list. -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 13:24, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * ( Comment copied from M.Bitton's talk page for context ): Hey, I apologize for coming on a bit strong there; looking at your record, it looks like you're WP:HERE to build a better encyclopedia, as am I. To clarify: when someone sweeps in and adds "Western Sahara" to a list of sovereign states, without explanation, it looks prima facie like tendentious editing trying to use WP as a platform to advance a real-world political cause. Now, on reflection, it looks to me like this was a good-faith change, and I hope I've now adequately explained why Western Sahara doesn't belong in that list, regardless of its political status. I welcome anyone who will actually try to maintain and improve that list, because it's actually been quite a bit of work to try to clean it up (mostly) by myself. Cheers! -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 13:39, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your apology. To clarify:


 * I didn't add it to a list of "sovereign states" as the list itself doesn't mention the word state (sovereign or otherwise) anywhere. While, according to you, the list is supposed to reflect the 170 contracting parties to the Ramsar Convention, that is something that may be clear to you as the article's creator, but unless it's mentioned somewhere, it won't be as clear to the others. The Non-Self-Governing territory of Western Sahara is always called Western Sahara. SADR hasn't been added and nobody is suggesting that it should, therefore it has nothing to do with it. I didn't mention the other dispute because that's not what is being discussed and I usually stick to what I know (hoping that the others do the same).


 * I guess for me it all boils down to a couple of simple questions: if adding the "the secretariat's position on the sites in disputed territories" to the list is an option, why add it at the end of the list where nobody would find it? If the World Database on Protected Areas managed to present the Ramsar Wetlands while sticking to facts and without injecting politics into it, why can't we?


 * I don't want to make a big deal out of this, I have enough on my plate dealing with the usual POV pushers and vandals, but at the same time I think it's important that the concerns are raised, regardless of whether they are addressed or not. I'll leave it to you. Best, M.Bitton (talk) 17:53, 24 October 2021 (UTC)


 * "Western Sahara" is a common English-language name for the SADR; our own article on the subject begins with the sentence, "The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, also known as Western Sahara, is a partially recognized de facto sovereign state...". I've given the lead section an update and some polish to try to clarify that the structure of this list article is a reflection of the Ramsar List's own organization, and I'll work on adding a section to discuss the fact that a handful of the sites are in disputed territories whose status the Ramsar secretariat takes no position on (or, you should feel free to, if you'd like). -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 20:48, 24 October 2021 (UTC)