The Special Habitats of Wales - Wetlands

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Below: Sand dunes at Dyfi NNR - picture courtesy Mike Alexander, NRW

Are you banjaxed by bogs, muddled over mires, fooled by fens or just worn down by working out the wetlands of Wales? If so, this is the page to help you sort your swamps from your saltmarshes, tell you where the best of each wetland type can be found in Wales, and what to expect (and wear!) on your visits to some of our most outstanding wildlife sites in Wales. As we who live here, or regularly visit on holiday know, Wales is wet! By ‘wet’ we largely mean that it has lots of rain, but not all our wetlands are the result of that higher-than-average rainfall alone; some of them exist because they are fed by underground springs, or because they were once lakes, and it is these subtle (to us) differences, which result in wetlands being categorised as different habitat types each supporting different wildlife species, and being called different names.

Fen and Calcareous Fen Mire Blanket Bog Raised Bog Swamp Saltmarsh Marshy Grassland Wet Heath Turlough Transition Mire