Aquatic Warbler's voice heard at environmental forum
of governmental scale.
The
10th Conference of Parties for
the Bonn Convention took place between 20th and 25th November
2011 in Bergen, Norway. Aquatic Warbler was put into agenda of
the Conference and a special side event was conducted by
Ministry of Environment of Belarus and APB-BirdLife Belarus with
the assistance of BirdLife International. The name of the side
event was "Joint international efforts to save the globally
threaten Aquatic Warbler: positive changes and pending issues."
The side event was attended by
representatives of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kenya,
Latvia, Poland, Senegal, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine and the
United Kingdom. The side event was chaired by Olivier Biber,
Head of International Biodiversity Matters Unit, Federal Office
for the Environment, Switzerland. The chair from this country
was especially welcomed considering that Switzerland joined AW
Memorandum during the Conference!
The main focuses of AW side
event were as follows:
-
To familiarize delegates
with Aquatic Warbler Memorandum, Action Plan and explain
reasons why this bird species gets so much attention and is
put into political agenda of the countries.
-
To present recent successes
in species conservation in breeding grounds.
-
To describe continued
threats, knowledge gaps and international conservation
priorities.
-
To underline the need of
fly way scale conservation.
Programme and presentations
from AW side event may be found
here.
Apart from mentioned above a
number of informal, but rather productive conversation with
delegates took place outside of plenary programme. Here are the
main outcomes presented below:
-
Senegalese Ministry
of Environment fully shares concern on agricultural
transformation of wetlands, but those areas located outside
of National Parcs are in the charge of Ministry of
Agriculture (Ousmane KANE, Deputy director, Direction
des park nationaux du Senegal);
-
Aquatic Warbler wintering
grounds in Inner Niger Delta, Mali are effected by
water level fluctuations. More information on habitats and
threats could be got from Bourama Niagate, Director PN.RBBB,
AEWA/CMS Focal Point, Mali.
-
Newly launched project
"Living on the edge" could be an appropriate platform to to
find a compromise solution between nature conservation and
agricultural transformation of wetlands in West Africa
(Thandiwe Chikomo, project manager, BirdLife Africa, Kenya);
-
In order to ensure more
effective species conservation in Ukraine, the
relevant actions should be included into National Strategy
for Biodiversity Conservation. The Strategy is a more
complex document, which works at national level. (Volodymyr
Domashlinets, Head of Fauna Conservation Division, Ministry
of Ecology and Natural Resources, Ukraine)
-
The Netherlands
agreed to assess possibility to sign AW Memorandum. (Gerald
van Dijk, senior policy officer, Ministry of Agriculture,
Nature and Food Quality).
The reason why it is has still not been signed - AW is classified as
vagrant at national scale;
-
Norway regularly holds
AWs on autumn migration, however the number of birds is very
low (Oysten Storkersen, Head of Project, Norwegian
Directorate for Nature Management).
-
Jiøí Flousek from Czech
Republic will take data from ringing center and will
assess possibility to have MoU signed by his country.
At the plenary the Conference
adopted a special resolution on African-Eurasian landbirds which
applies among others to the aquatic warbler. The resolution
foresees development of an action plan. Switzerland is willing
to fund its development. The BirdLife African Partnership can
provide a coordinator to pull together the plan. Ghana, the
resolution proposer, has expressed willingness to host an action
plan workshop. The level of commitment to action plan
implementation will be decided at the next COP.
For more information on the
Conference see also
the CMS
web site.
Uladzimir
Malashevich
BirdLife/CMS
International Aquatic
Warbler Conservation
Officer
|
Bergen,
Norway.
Switzerland has joined
Aquatic Warbler Memorandum
Bulgaria votes for the Aquatic Warbler.
Aquatic
Warbler side event was rather well attended in spite of 5(!) other
events and EU meeting were taking place at the same time.
|
