Making Plans for Managing Waterbirds and Wetlands

Eastern and Southern African Countries Receive Support from the Technical Support Unit of AEWA’s African Initiative

Bonn, 3 July 2015 - The Technical Support Unit (TSU) associated with the African Initiative in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute (KWSTI) organized a workshop on elaborating management plans for key wetlands for migratory waterbirds.  The workshop took place from 28 to 29 May 2015 at Naivasha, Kenya, where site managers from the eleven countries party to AEWA from the sub-regions of Eastern and Southern Africa and certain other NFPs came together.

The aim of the workshop was to familiarize participants with the processes for developing management plans and help them to understand the procedures involved in drawing them up and implementing them as well as providing the tools for doing so.  It was equally meant to provide an opportunity to exchange ideas. Allowing the various site managers a chance to share their knowledge and experiences of the problems encountered and the solutions used to address them.

The workshop was moreover a chance to bring together the three African regional centres offering specialized training in the management of wildlife –l’École de Faune de Garoua (EFG), Cameroon, the KWSTI in Naivasha, Kenya, and the College of African Wildlife Management (CAWM) at Mweka, United Republic of Tanzania. Allowing them to enhance their collaboration and working towards elaborating a framework partnership agreement.  The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) emanating from this meeting is currently out for signature.  The main purpose of the MOU is to coordinate integrating training tools on flyways such as those developed by AEWA and also by the National Office for Hunting and Wildlife (ONCFS) into the programmes of the wildlife colleges.

The first practical example of this collaboration will be defining the content of a common training module for the three schools on waterbirds and their wetland habitats.  The TSU will undertake a mission related to this to Mweka, Tanzania.

This workshop was organized in response to a meeting (held in October 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa) of AEWA National Focal Points (NFPs) from the sub-region of the eleven contracting Parties of the Agreement from East and Southern Africa with the aim of examining how to implement the PoAA.  During the course of this sub-regional meeting, the National Focal Points agreed a set of priorities for the two sub-regions.

The  AEWA Plan of Action for Africa (PoAA) provides the operational guidelines for the implementation of the African Initiative.  It contains a range of a concrete actions aimed as transposing the objectives of the 2009-2017 AEWA Strategic Plan into results on the ground.

Last updated on 03 July 2015

Type: 
News item
Region: 
Africa