Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands - Issues

Issues

The wetlands have suffered from increasingly severe droughts in recent years. Since the 1980s, the use of small gasoline-powered irrigation pumps has increased the land that can be used for farming, causing conflicts with the cattle herders and disputes over land ownership.

Dams have threatened the viability of the wetlands, particularly the Tiga Dam and the Challawa Gorge Dam, which now control most of the water flow in the Hadejia river and have reduced seasonal flooding and overall water supply. It is estimated that the Tiga dam on the Kano river has reduced flooding by about 350 km2. A dam was built on the Hadejia river just upstream from the wetlands for irrigation purposes, completed in 1972, which has also affected flooding. The proposed Kafin Zaki Dam on the Jama'are river could pose a further threat. Due to these changes, large areas of farming and grazing land and important fish ponds have either dried up along channels blocked by invasive Typha grass, or have been flooded.

Read more about this topic:  Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands

Famous quotes containing the word issues:

    Your toddler will be “good” if he feels like doing what you happen to want him to do and does not happen to feel like doing anything you would dislike. With a little cleverness you can organize life as a whole, and issues in particular, so that you both want the same thing most of the time.
    Penelope Leach (20th century)

    I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.
    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)

    How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can’t stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn’t legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)