Oualidia

Loualidia, the official spelling, is a municipality in Sidi Bennour province¹, which belongs to the Casablanca-Settat region.² In the 2024 census the municipality had 21,742 inhabitants, 9,789 of them in the urban centre; the province as a whole had 451,930.³

On 15 January 2005 the Complexe de Sidi Moussa-Walidia, covering 5,350 hectares, was added to the Ramsar List as a wetland of international importance. It consists of a chain of separate wetlands cut off from the sea by a belt of dunes, stretching from the village of Sidi El Abed, 35 kilometres south of El Jadida, to Walidia, 66 kilometres north of Safi.⁴ Two lagoons and four marshes and salt pans lie in a hollow between the dunes, bounded to the east by a cliff 50 to 80 metres high.⁵

According to the Ramsar information sheet, almost every migratory bird on the East Atlantic flyway passes through the area. 114 species of waterbirds have been recorded, averaging 15,335 birds, more than 3 per cent of the waterbirds wintering in Morocco; for waders the complex is one of the country’s three most important sites, together with Merja Zerga and the bay of Dakhla.⁶ About ten notable species breed here regularly or occasionally, including the marbled duck, black-crowned night heron, red-crested pochard, red-knobbed coot and pied avocet, and the Moroccan spadefoot toad, found only in Morocco, reaches the southern limit of its range here.⁷

In the lagoons the salinity decreases inland because groundwater constantly seeps in: at the inlets it is 30 to 40 parts per thousand, in the inner part about 15 and, after heavy rain, below 5.⁸ Near the inlets the bottom is sandy, further in it is muddy. The shores are dominated by glasswort and other salt-tolerant plants.⁹

Farming is the main activity in the area, both in the land it covers and in the number of people it employs; the salt pans take up about 618 hectares, half of the complex’s water surface.¹⁰ Pacific oysters are farmed in the Walidia lagoon, in five farms covering 25.5 hectares in total.¹¹ A 2008 report put production at about 200 tonnes of oysters a year.¹²

Since 1984 the whole complex has been a permanent hunting reserve, and Morocco’s 1996 master plan for protected areas lists it as a site of biological and ecological interest of first priority.¹³ 17 per cent of the Ramsar site lies in the Oualidia hunting reserve and 54 per cent in the Lagune de Sidi Moussa reserve. Responsibility lies with the Casablanca-Settat regional directorate of the Agence Nationale des Eaux et Forêts.¹⁴

Two cultural sites in the area are protected by the Ministry of Culture: the kasbah of Walidia on the cliff above the lagoon and the marabout of Sidi Moussa. The marabout of Sidi Daoud Hrir stands on the dune belt between the Walidia lagoon and the sea.¹⁵ The town takes its name from the Saadian sultan El Oualid, who had the kasbah built in 1634 to guard the entrance to the harbour in the roadstead.¹⁶

The RS 121 coastal road from El Jadida to Safi runs alongside the wetlands.¹⁷ On its 143-kilometre El Jadida–Safi section, opened on 1 August 2016, the A1 motorway has an Oualidia junction.¹⁸