At the kind invitation of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority, the second meeting of the AEWA White-Winged Flufftail International Working Group (IWG) took place in Addis Ababa from 10-12 August. The meeting was locally organized by the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society (BirdLife Partner in Ethiopia) and convened by the coordinator of the IWG Dr Hanneline Smit-Robinson of BirdLife South Africa.

Representatives of countries and wildlife experts are meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, to address poisoning of migratory birds, a problem that also threatens important predators.

The 10th Meeting of the AEWA Standing Committee (StC10) was held from 8 to 10 July in Kampala at the kind invitation of the Ugandan Government. The meeting was the first AEWA Standing Committee to take place in Africa and was an important milestone in the run-up to the 6th Session of the Meeting of the Parties (MOP6) due to take place 9-14 November 2015 in Bonn, Germany.

The 39th Session of the World Heritage Committee is meeting in Bonn, a stone’s throw from the headquarters of the Convention on Migratory Species and several of its associated agreements. Jacques Trouvilliez, Executive Secretary of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), and Rüdiger Strempel, Secretary of the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat, examine the importance of those sites inscribed in the list for their natural rather than cultural qualities.

The 2012-2017 AEWA Plan of Action for Africa (PoAA) provides the operational guidelines for the implementation of the African Initiative for the period concerned. 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.

Bonn, 16 June 2015 –Today marks the 20^th anniversary of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA).

Linking regional and global aspects of nature conservation, two meetings held back to back in Bonn on 13 May 2015 discussed the protection of migratory birds along the East Atlantic Flyway.

Barirega Akankwasah is the Vice-Chair of the AEWA Standing Committee and the AEWA National Focal Point in Uganda, a country which hosts over 1,000 different bird species representing 10 per cent of the world’s avian fauna. Barirega is concerned that, while these birds provide vast ecological and economic services to mankind, they are at the same time facing imminent threats: habitat loss, obstacles along flyways and unsustainable levels of use. AEWA is vitally important as it provides one means of delivering the international cooperation needed to ensure that the birds are conserved.

The Nature Conservation Sector (NCS) of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) in close cooperation with Nature Conservation Egypt (NCE), recently completed a project aimed at boosting efforts towards waterbird conservation in the Red Sea coastal region in Egypt. This project was implemented from April 2011 to December 2014 and financed in the framework of the AEWA Small Grants Fund (SGF).

The White-winged Flufftail (Sarothrura ayresi) was the focus of an AEWA Small Grants Fund (SGF) supported project which was recently completed by the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society (EWNHS), in the Berga wetland. The latter is an Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) and site of critical importance for waterbirds - located in Ethiopia’s central highlands.