New Film: Waterbird Monitoring in Africa: The Chad Experience
African wetland scene © Jacques Trouvilliez
Bonn, 2 August 2019 – The AEWA Secretariat is pleased to share this video entitled “Waterbird Monitoring in Africa: The Chad Experience”, recently released by the Technical Support Unit (TSU) to the AEWA African Initiative.
The video was developed with the support of the project “Strengthening expertise in sub-Saharan Africa on birds and their rational use for communities and their environment” (RESSOURCE), in the framework of the Sahelian Wetlands Site component of the Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme. It aims to illustrate some of the work being done under the RESSOURCE project, in particular for enhancing capacity and providing support for the identification and monitoring of waterbirds in Chad.
As the film nicely shows, the RESSOURCE project is actively enhancing capacity for waterbird monitoring in Chad and in other countries of the Sahel region that host many wetlands of key importance for migratory waterbird species covered under AEWA. The film also shows how the conservation of waterbirds requires international collaboration which can be fostered both on a technical and political level. I would like to congratulate the entire project team for all the good work they are doing to support the implementation of AEWA in Africa.
Jacques Trouvilliez, Executive Secretary of AEWA
The 13-minute video follows experts from the African Parks conservation organization, the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), the Division for Wildlife Conservation and Protected Areas in Chad, Aarhus University in Denmark, the Tour du Valat Research Institute, the French National Hunting and Wildlife Agency (ONCFS), as they carry out a waterbird census and enhance local waterbird monitoring capacity at the Zakouma National Park, located within the Bahr Aouk and Salamat floodplains in Chad. The Zakouma National Park has been identified as a Critical Site for migratory waterbirds, particularly the Vulnerable Black Crowned-crane (Balearica pavonina), of which it hosts 15 per cent of the global population.
The RESSOURCE project is a joint initiative of several institutions and organizations, funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the French Global Environment Facility (FFEM) and the European Union (EU) through the SWM Programme, among others. The project aims to improve the management of natural resources, especially waterbirds, in the great Sahelian wetlands in Chad, Egypt, Mali, Senegal and Sudan. The project promotes and supports monitoring, exchange of knowledge, sustainable use and integrated management of waterbird resources and the key wetlands on which they depend. It also seeks to strengthen legal and institutional frameworks for better governance to ensure sustainable management of migratory waterbirds in the region. The RESSOURCE project directly contributes to achieving the strategic goals of the AEWA and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.
For more information on the RESSOURCE project, please visit the project page on the FAO Website and an article on the AEWA website announcing the project’s launch.
Last updated on 26 August 2019