Lake Oursi, Burkina Faso

Lake Oursi is highly threatened. One reason is the intensive land-use: over-exploitation of the natural resources through intensive livestock farming and deforestation. Other problems stem from poaching, the drying-out of the ponds and lakes, which, with climate change, is likely to happen more often in the near future, and expanding sand-dunes.


© Oursi bird Club

For many years, our partner, a Site Support Group, the Oursi Bird Club, with support from NATURAMA, has been addressing the threats (Site Support Groups are local groups looking after Important Bird Areas, a concept that has become highly successful within the BirdLife partnership around the world).

Photo © Muhtari Aminu-Kano

NATURAMA and the Oursi Bird Club have increasingly focused their attention to help people managing their environment. This is most important considering that Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries on Earth, with rural people depending heavily on natural resources.

Besides bird monitoring, environmental awareness has been raised and activities to stabilise the local ecosystems have been developed. Recently, Swedbio, an international development programme of the Swedish government, through the BirdLife network, has enabled a project at three sites in Burkina Faso that supports local communities in securing their livelihoods through sustainable natural resource use. Oursi is one of those sites. The project promotes agroforestry which secures habitats from the loss of soil from erosion and desertification as well as preventing the siltation of water bodies. In 2006, for example, a total of 1.2 km of hedges were planted at the ponds. Measures like this help the local people and the wetland-dependent birds – as well as woodland and savannah birds - at the same time.