Bonn, 15 December 2016 - The December issue of the African-Eurasian Waterbird Newsletter has just been published.  It features articles on October’s 14^th Pan-African Ornithological Congress (PAOC) which was held in Senegal, the appointment of Angola’s Miguel Xavier as the new representative for African Coordinators to the Strategic Working Group of the African-Eurasian Waterbird Monitoring Partnership; plans for “Total Counts” to be carried out in North Africa in January 2017, covering all of the wetlands in the five countries concerned; and reports on two workshops.  The first concerned strengthening capacity to manage data, which was organized by AEWA and was held immediately after PAOC14; and the second was for the Mediterranean Network of Waterbirds (Medwaterbirds) and took place in Arles, France in October.

The International Waterbird Census (IWC), run by Wetlands International, is one of the largest and longest running citizen-based global waterbird counts in the world, having started in 1967.  The African-Eurasian Waterbird Census (AEWC) is a regional programme of the IWC, covering Africa, Europe and South-West and Central Asia. The results of the census are the backbone of the Conservation Status Report used by AEWA Parties to revise the Action Plan at each Meeting of the Parties.