Life in the Great Wetlands

The flooded zones of the Loango National Park in Gabon form an extraordinary mosaic and a complex of deeply interconnected biotopes. A particularly rare ensemble where the beaches, prairies, lagoons and forests juxtapose and interlock. Its exceptional character is accentuated by the fact that this great wetland area has remained intact. Humans have never taken up residence here. At Loango, the water cycle controls the entirety of plant and animal life. Elephants, hippopotamuses, gorillas and other species that live in the park must adapt to periods when water invades everything and to those when it is scarce. Subject to its whims, they’ve had to get used to an itinerant lifestyle in order to survive.

In the Sabah region, East Malaysia, lies one of the island of Borneo’s last wildlife strongholds. Encircled by logging operations and plantations which ravage the area, the great wetland zone of Kinabatangan offers a palette of diverse habitats to the remaining representatives of endangered species. It’s in this fragile environment that the last forest rhinoceroses, orangutans and the surprising pygmy elephant must continually adapt to the whims of the water cycle.

At the gates to the Amazon, hides a remarkable and nearly unexplored world. It’s called Pacaya Samiria or the ‘jungle of the mirrors’, the place where sky and water merge as one. This great wetland zone shelters a stunning variety of vertebrates and invertebrates, both land and aquatic. In this constantly submerged land, pink dolphins, giant otters, jaguars and spider monkeys organize themselves and adapt to affront the complex water cycle. Feed by dozens of tributaries that careen down from the Andean Cordillera and an extraordinary quantity of rainfall, Pacaya Samiria is an immense freshwater reservoir… the Amazon’s faucet.

Between relentless droughts and devastating floods, the Kaziranga National Park is subject to one of the most extreme water cycles. This great wetland region is precious to the survival and the prosperity of some of the earth’s most unique species. In its high, dense grasses, dotted with swamps left behind by the flooding of the Brahmaputra, one of the world’s largest populations of tigers and one-horned rhinoceros still have a chance to thrive.

In Canada, on the Bay of Fundy, tracking the water cycle makes for a fascinating journey from ocean depths to far inland regions. Here, eclectic fauna and thriving flora affront the highest tides in the world. The powerful ebbs and flows of the water sweep a volume of water equivalent to all the earth’s rivers united into this bay. The intensity of the currents and the waves have created a unique marine environment where the giants of the sea delight in plankton and krill. It’s this particularity that enables the 500 remaining North Atlantic right whales to take refuge here every summer to feed.