Hírek a nagyvilágból

A recent report on the health of the ocean found that worldwide the marine vertebrate population declined by 49 per cent between 1970 and 2012 (see WWF/ZSL Living Blue Planet Report 2015). Globally, an estimated 300,000 small whales, dolphins and porpoises die each year from entanglement in fishing gear. Also in Europe, incidental catch is seen as the greatest threat to small cetaceans. However, the situation is much more complex than one might think.

In the Hollywood blockbuster The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), the adventurous photographer Sean O’Connell decides not to take a picture of a snow leopard because he wishes to appreciate the unique moment of spotting the elusive and beautiful ‘ghost cat’.
В голливудском блокбастере «Невероятная жизнь Уолтера Митти» (2013), фотограф Шон О'Коннелл решает не фотографировать снежного барса, потому что он хочет оценить уникальный момент обнаружения неуловимой и красивой «призрачной кошки».

Today is ‘World Wetlands Day,’ a global annual celebration of the vital socio-environmental role of wetlands and the anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands (1971) in the Iranian city of Ramsar. This convention, more commonly known as the Ramsar Convention, is a central partner of CMS and a fellow member of the Biodiversity Liaison Group. It has 169 Contracting Parties and covers over 2,200 wetland sites (with a combined area of more than 2.1 million square kilometres).

Reports have reached the Secretariat that an outbreak of what is thought to be peste-des-petits ruminants (sheep and goat plague) is occurring among the Saiga Antelopes in Mongolia, where already more than 1,000 individuals have died and the epidemic is continuing.

From the early days of the Agreement, one population caused scientists, conservationists and governments special concern: the Baltic Harbour Porpoise.

The preamble to the Agreement text negotiated in the early 1990s already makes it clear: “Aware that the population of harbour porpoises of the Baltic Sea has drastically decreased,” and “Concerned about the status of small cetaceans in the Baltic and North Seas”. We have thus known for a long time that harbour porpoises in the Baltic Sea are in trouble. Twenty-five years later the problem is not solved yet. But we have come a long way. And the porpoises are still around!

CMS Deputy Executive Secretary, Bert Lenten welcomed a group of 19 scholars and one supervisor from the Klaus Töpfer Fellowship Programme, who visited Langer Eugen (“Tall Eugene”), the building that houses the Secretariats of the Bonn-based CMS Family.

Two important avian-related workshops took place back to back in Kecskemét, Hungary, in January 2017. Both meetings were organized and facilitated by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB, the BirdLife partner in the UK) and BirdLife Hungary under the framework of two EU LIFE Projects. The goal of both workshops was the development of a basis and strategy for new International Species Action Plans, one on the European Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur) and one on the European Roller (Coracias garrulus).

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the opening for signature of the Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North Seas (ASCOBANS) in New York on 17 March 1992.
Over the past 25 years, ASCOBANS has provided the framework for international cooperation for the protection of small cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises – in northern and western European waters. But getting the Agreement ready took quite some effort.

The Coordinating Unit of the Raptors MoU, in collaboration with the EU LIFE+ Project ‘The Return of the Neophron’, has today launched a month-long Public Consultation Exercise on a draft Flyway Action Plan for the Conservation of the Balkan and Central Asian Populations of the Egyptian Vulture (EVFAP).

Two important avian meetings took place back to back in Singapore early in 2017: the first was a meeting of the Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative (AMBI), a group that operates under the Arctic Council’s CAFF (Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna); the second was the 9th Meeting of Partners to the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership