Why Conserve Papyrus Swamps?

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Papyrus Swamps as a Habitat in Africa

The swamps of Africa provide stopping over places each year for millions of migrating birds. One of the most valuable resting stops on the migration route from Europe to Africa is the floodplain of the Jordan River Valley an extension of the African Rift Valley. Within the Valley a most important resource is the Huleh Swamp, a papyrus swamp in which at least 530 species have been recorded and in which 25,000 cranes spend the winter. This is out of a population of 75,000 cranes that fly back and forth between Europe.






Considering that an estimated 500 million birds pass through the region each year, and the extent of habitat that papyrus provides for birds in Africa (estimated at 9 million acres) it appears that papyrus swamps are a major world resource for birds. Birds, in turn, form the life blood of tourism which provides Africa with a major source of foreign exchange. It is a growth sector not to be ignored.

Papyrus Swamps Natural Filters for Sewage









The photo shows a papyrus swamp thriving on sewage that is leaving the municipal treatment facility in Kampala, Uganda in Africa. Papyrus takes up vast quantities of nutrients that would otherwise flow into Lake Victoria.

Conservation of Papyrus Swamps

Recent work by Maclean, Boar and Lugo, a team of ecologists at the Universities of Exeter and East Anglia, has shown that the use of papyrus swamps in a multifunctional, sustainable manner (for handicrafts, fishing, fuel, thatching and low intensity food cropping) can produce rural income far in excess of that derived when the swamps are cleared for building or agriculture.

Yet papyrus swamp habitats throughout Africa are being drained, burnt over and reclaimed, in addition, they are sites for spraying mosquitoes, mollusks and tsetse fly using pesticides that are toxic to small fish and insects, which contaminates the food chain of aquatic birds and is taking its toll each year.




When papyrus swamps are cleared, nutrients and runoff from farms pollute local waters as in the aerial photo taken along the shore of an African lake. Papyrus clearly is a great natural asset and provides an effective environmental barrier at little cost.

In several places in Africa efforts to restore papyrus swamps have begun, but it may be too little, too late. As with many wetlands, such as the Everglades in the US, it is now clear that the best practice is to leave the wetland intact, or in Africa to encourage rural multiuse in a sustainable fashion.

© Copyright 2009 John J. Gaudet, All Rights Reserved

A Fine Place For Birds

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The ancient Egyptians hunted birds in papyrus swamps along the Nile, a favorite place for Pharaoh to get away from it all, and found that birds liked the flowering heads of papyrus or umbels, which are up to three feet wide. They provide fine nesting material and are full of tiny seeds, while fish and aquatic invertebrates abound in the swamp water below. In the upper canopy among the umbels are found the Papyrus Gonolek, Papyrus Canary, Caruthers's Cisticola, three swamp warblers and hundreds or visiting bird species. Swimming birds as well as herons and egrets feed and nest along the edges of the swamp, it is here we find the threatened Slaty Egret (Egretta vinaceigula, world population of only 5,000 to 10,000 birds), which breeds in the papyrus swamps of the Okavango delta.

Papyrus Swamps - A critical habitat

One of the most extraordinary birds known to man lives only in papyrus swamps, the Shoebill (Balaeniceps rex) a stork-like bird with an outsized head and huge primitive beak ending in a long hook. Its range extends south from Sudan to Zambia. Large numbers are captured for zoos, which exhibit this bird as a curiosity. The total population of shoebills, once estimated at about 11,000 to 15,000 birds, has declined in the late 1990s to about 5 - 8,000. According to the Animal Welfare Institute, Tanzania's population of 2,000 birds is one of the few stable ones, protected as it is in the country's first Ramsar International Wetland site.

Papyrus swamp habitats throughout Africa are being drained, burnt over and converted to agriculture, in addition, they are sites for spraying mosquitoes, mollusks and tsetse fly using pesticides that are toxic to small fish and insects, which contaminates the food chain of aquatic birds and is taking its toll each year.

Yet the swamps in Africa also provide stopping over places each year for millions of migrating birds. One of the most valuable resting stops on the migration route from Europe to Africa is the floodplain of the Jordan River Valley an extension of the African Rift Valley. Within the Valley a most important resource is the Huleh Swamp, a papyrus swamp in which at least 530 species have been recorded and in which 25,000 cranes spend the winter. This is out of a population of 75,000 cranes that fly back and forth between Europe.

Considering that an estimated 500 million birds pass through the region each year, and the extent of habitat that papyrus provides for birds in Africa (estimated at 6 billion acres) it appears that papyrus swamps are a major world resource for birds. Surprising then that so few people know what the swamps look like, how they function or what their future is. And not only are they a major habitat, in many lakes and rivers in Africa they are the only natural filters left for sewage and soil erosion, something that I will discuss in the next post.

© Copyright 2009 John J. Gaudet, all rights reserved. Image sources: Chris Gibbins (www.bird-stamps.org/country/botswa.htm); Wikimedia Creative Commons, including Tom Tarrant (ShareAlike 3.0); bird migration map courtesy of Yossi Leshem, and the author’s collection.

Making Papyrus Paper

Papyrus paper in ancient days was made in factories close to the source, the papyrus swamps of the Delta. A few factories were located in the Faiyum and elsewhere, but the Delta factories provided the main supply of paper to the world. These factories were simple, large, open areas close to the swamps. They had to have space for drying and polishing the sheets of paper, as well as facilities for shipping and storage.

After making the sheets the workers would glue them together in rolls that might be more than 100ft. in length, though the majority were smaller, standard scrolls of 20 pages. A great number of scrolls amounting to millions of sheets was exported during the Roman Empire. At this time business and government depended on the supply of papyrus paper, which was critical to the development of world enterprise.

Hand-made papyrus paper is today made in Cairo and Luxor using the same method as in the old days and using papyrus plants that are cultivated in Egypt.

The most important step in making papyrus paper is the slicing of the peeled stem. The thickness of the slices determines the quality of paper. If the slices are taken by an expert, they are thin and can be used directly or they can be dried for later use. Fresh or dried, all strips are resoaked before use.

The dry strips, which are simply air dried thin slices of the stem, are available on the Internet and are cheap and easy to order from many sources in Egypt. Paper can be made from them as easily as from fresh cut stems, which are often hard to find outside of Egypt.

The Process Used Today in Cairo

The papyrus stems are harvested, cut into lengths then peeled.

The exposed pith is then sliced into thin slices with a razor.

The strips can be used directly or laid out in the sun to dry.

Fresh strips or dried they are soaked and rolled out several times to make them supple.

Laid out on a board in two layers, one vertical and one horizontal, the strips form a mat or matrix.

This matrix is then placed between blotters and pressed for several days until dry.

Removed from the press the sheet is further dried then polished with a polishing stone.

The final paper over a light reveals the two layers.

The sheets are then glued together to form a scroll.

The scribe now writes and draws hieroglyphs on the scroll using a reed pen or brush.

© Copyright 2009 John J. Gaudet, All Rights Reserved (images of scroll and scribe from Wikipedia Creative Commons)

Papyrus Crafts

Papyrus -- Raw Material for Many Things Around the House

In ancient Egypt papyrus stems were used to make millions of pieces of paper, but in addition, the stems were used for making many other things that were useful around the house.



Handmade modern papyrus paper.


Papyrus still grows in many places in Africa where it still comes in handy for crafts of all sorts.


Papyrus stems harvested from local swamps are set out in the sun to dry.




Sewn together the stems form mats that can be used for floor covering, ceilings inside huts and screens to separate rooms.







Tied together the stems make a light, portable table for market days.






Peeled or slit the green stems can be woven into baskets









or sandals







Or made into boxes such as this container made of papyrus from Ancient Egypt. (Brit. Museum)







The most common use for the stems is in roof thatching









In ancient Egypt papyrus was woven into cheap, strong rope and cordage used for ship rigging, and moving masonry blocks for building monuments.


Lamp wicks in old Egypt could be made from fibers of papyrus, wicks were still called “paperus” in 16th Century Italy.


© Copyright 2009 John J. Gaudet, All Rights Reserved

Papyrus Swamps of the World-The Sudd

The Sudd– A Papyrus Swamp of Large Proportion



In size it is second only to the Pantanal in S. America, which is the largest swamp in the world. The Sudd is now a Ramsar site, a declared international wetland reserve, which the Pantanal is not, therefore the Sudd is the largest protected swamp in the world.


Along the White Nile south of Khartoum, in Sudan, the Sudd is a 14 million acre wetland, dominated by swamp grasses and papyrus. It expands with the rains to 32 million very wet acres, the size of England.


The aerial photo was provided by Dr. Georg Petersen of HYDROC Consult a group that provides expert engineering consultancy services through a network of independent specialists (www.hydroc.de). Dr. Petersen is involved in research projects in cooperation with the University of Kiel and the University of Nairobi in Kenya, Makerere University in Uganda, Khartoum University in Sudan and University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.

The photo shows only a small part of the Sudd, a section of papyrus swamp that has a characteristic compact dark green color. A channel is clearly seen in the photo that is kept clear for easy passage of boats, unlike the case many years ago in Victorian days when explorers, like Samuel and Florence Baker, had to force a passage for their steamer as shown in the sketch.

Today the Sudd is threatened by the Jonglei Canal, a 220 mile canal intended to by-pass the swamp, one of the causes for the outbreak of the civil war in 1983 between North and South Sudan, the canal has been temporarily halted by civil disturbance. If completed as planned it could cause considerable ecological damage.

Don’t forget to check out more interesting facts and juicy gossip on my web page and blogs at: www.fieldofreeds.com.   Also get on board early with my new book on papyrus to be published by Pegasus in June 2014, called The Plant That Changed the World, now available for pre-purchase on Amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/goodreed.