This is a good moment to look back on what has
been achieved during the last decade under the Agreement, but also to step
forward and to find new opportunities towards successful waterbird conservation.
Therefore, the AEWA Secretariat is happy to launch the newly developed e-newsletter
with its very first issue on this historical date. The e-news will from
now on be sent out by the Secretariat on a monthly basis. Today (16 June
2005) the staff of CMS and its Agreements convened at the AEWA Secretariat
to celebrate "our Birthday". This year the African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement,
which was concluded under the aegis of the Convention on Migratory Species
of Wild Animals in The Hague, the Netherlands, on 16 June 1995, celebrates
its 10th Anniversary. [read
on]
On the generous invitation of the Government
of Mauritius the 6th Meeting of the Technical Committee took place from
08 - 11 May 2005 in Flic en Flac, Mauritius. It was the last TC meeting
before the 3rd Session of the Meeting of the Parties (MOP3), which will
take place from 23-27 October 2005, in Dakar, Senegal. Among other things
the following items were reviewed and discussed during the meeting: proposals
for the new International Implementation Priorities of AEWA for the triennium
2006-2008; guidance on interpretation of the term 'long-term decline of
waterbird populations'; guidance on defining bio-geographical populations
of waterbirds; report on status and trends of waterbird populations in the
AEWA region; inclusion of additional species to the AEWA list; further development
of the Agreement; draft Single Species Action Plans for five waterbird species.
In several cases discussions led to the approval of draft Resolutions to
be submitted through the Standing Committee to MOP3. The minutes of TC6
will be made available as soon as possible on the revamped AEWA
website. Here you will also find all documents that were tabled
at TC6.
The UNEP/CMS Thesis Award on Migratory Species Conservation has been launched by the Secretariat of the Bonn Convention on Migratory Species, on the occasion of its 25th Anniversary in 2004, and is sponsored by Lufthansa. The award of 10,000 EURO will be offered every three years at the Conference of Parties to CMS at alternating locations, and for the first time at the 8th meeting of the CMS Conference of the Parties (COP8) in November 2005, in affiliation with Museum Koenig and the Global Register of Migratory Species in Bonn. [read on]
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, often shortened to Libya,
has deposited its instrument of accession to AEWA and will become the 49th
Contracting Party as of 1st June 2005. Its neighboring countries are Egypt
in the east, Tunisia and Algeria in the west and Niger, Chad and Sudan in
the south. Being bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the north Libya has
a coastline of 1,770 km with many important coastal wetlands. Away from
these coastal wetlands Libya has minimal surface water. [read
on]
A collection of detailed appraisals of the status of non-breeding waterbirds in the UK. The Waterbird Review Series brings together up to four decades of data and knowledge from the long-term monitoring programmes of swan and migratory goose populations that winter in Britain and Ireland. This series of inventories and reviews responds, in part, to the call in the AEWA Action Plan for national inventories of sites of importance. The reviews generally covers not only UK but also other countries used by a particular population, usually Ireland, but including parts of continental Europe also. [read on]
As the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian
Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) will be 10 years old in 2005, the Standing Committee
of the Agreement has declared the second weekend of April (9 and 10 April
2005) as the Migratory Waterbird Days (MWDs). We believe that this new international
event within the AEWA area will become popular, will prove to be useful
and will be celebrated annually throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East
and Central Asia.
The idea behind the MWDs is to draw the attention of the public and the authorities to the importance of the local and national levels as an integral part of the flyway conservation of migratory waterbird species. The emphasis of this year's celebrations was on the 10th anniversary of the Agreement. [read on]
