Wadi El Rayan

The Wadi El Rayan Protected Area was declared in 1989 in Fayoum governorate, in the Egyptian Western Desert, and protects some 1,759 km².

Its most striking feature is recent and man-made: in the 1970s surplus agricultural drainage water from the Fayoum was channelled into this depression, forming two lakes linked by a cascade that is the only waterfall in Egypt. The system, conceived as a hydraulic solution, has generated a wetland in the middle of the desert that has become an important stopover for birds migrating between Europe and Africa.

The rest of the area is desert: dune fields, plateaux, springs and eroded hills. It is home to threatened Saharan wildlife such as the dorcas gazelle, the slender-horned gazelle, the fennec fox and Rüppell's fox. Within its boundaries lies Wadi Al-Hitan, the Valley of the Whales, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2005, with its Eocene fossil cetacean beds. The main threats are poaching, the pressure of off-road vehicles on the fossil beds and the quality of the lake water, which depends on agricultural drainage laden with salts and agrochemicals.