A workshop to revise the AEWA Sociable Lapwing Single Species Action Plan took place on 30 March - 1 April 2009 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. This workshop was also the closing event for a 3-year project on the species led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB, BirdLife in the UK) and financed by the UK’s Darwin Initiative.

Governmental and NGO representatives from the seven key range states for the species (Kazakhstan, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Sudan and India) attended the workshop. The programme followed the standard setting for AEWA species action planning workshops. On the first day, two introductory presentations on the species ecology and on the international species action planning framework were followed by seven national presentations, which gave insight into the situation of the critically endangered Sociable Lapwing and its conservation in all the key range states. These introductory presentations were followed by several sessions of threat/problem analysis and objective setting, which extended to the second day. On the last day, the participants split up into groups and worked out the activities of the action plan from their national perspectives.

The workshop recognised hunting in the Middle East as the primary current threat to the species which will require immediate action. Shooting of Sociable Lapwings in Syria was recently documented by BirdLife International.

Two evening presentations informed the participants on the BirdLife International’s Preventing Extinctions Programme and on the recently launched Slender-billed Curlew quest. The workshop was concluded by a presentation on the two-year follow up project to identify the key stop over and wintering sites of the species. This project, which was kicked off on 1 April and will run until the spring of 2011, was funded by the Darwin Initiative.

A representative of Swarovski Optics, which together with RSPB are the Species Champions for the Sociable Lapwing within the BirdLife’s Preventing Extinctions Programme, gave away binoculars and spotting scopes to representatives of all the seven range states. This donation will significantly boost capacity for field observation.

The workshop was convened and facilitated by the AEWA Secretariat and excellently organised by the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity in Kazakhstan (ACBK) and RSPB. Funding for the event was provided by the Darwin Initiative, Swarovski Optics and an anonymous donor.

The Sociable Lapwing SSAP will be revised according to the outcomes of the workshop. The new plan will be extended to cover the species' eastern flyway to the Indian subcontinent (outside of the AEWA area) and will therefore be implemented in the frameworks of both AEWA and CMS (Convention on Migratory Species).