Birdlife International Africa Partnership E-Bulletin
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BirdLife International Africa Partnership E-bulletin Together for birds and people July - September 2005 BirdLife International Africa Partnership Secretariat, PO Box 3502, 00100 GPO Nairobi, Kenya T: +254-20-8562246 / F: +254-20-8562259 / E: [email protected] / W: www.birdlife.org *** CAP SPECIAL *** Panel discussion This edition of the BirdLife Africa CAP 2005 opened with a panel discussion, chaired Partnership E-bulletin is fully dedicated to by Paul Matiku from NatureKenya (see photo). the BirdLife Council for the Africa The question to answer was: ‘what have we Partnership (CAP) meeting 2005 hosted saved?’ by CBCS, the Cameroon Biodiversity Conservation Society, in Kribi, Cameroon. This meeting took place from 25-29 July 2005 and was attended by 63 people from 24 countries. The meeting was chaired by Achilles Byaruhanga of NatureUganda and opened by Dr. Madi Ali, the General Secretary in the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) of Cameroon. The theme of the meeting was “People- centered Conservation”. Read all about it in this e-bulletin! The editors The answer was: a lot, but not enough. Yes; it is assumed that more than 18 bird species (globally) ** NEWS FLASH ** would have gone extinct without BirdLife See also the press release from CAP 2005: intervention; and yes, it is true that local http://www.birdlife.org/news/pr/2005/07/ communities are now supporting conservation africa_mdgs.html across Africa, e.g. 10,000 hectares of Oku Forest in Cameroon is being saved through PFM; and yes, IBAs are now informing policy decisions across the continent. But on the other hand: conservation has slipped down the global agenda, and is completely missing from the G8 declaration; climate change will exacerbate existing habitat loss; the BirdLife network only covers 18 out of the 58 countries and islands in Africa; and last but not least: we are not too good at promoting ourselves, which impacts on our fundraising capabilities… Thus, the conclusion was: we are Group photo of the participants who attended the CAP 05 doing well, but we need to get more resources into meeting. Also in the photo are representatives from the African conservation; and we need to build on our Cameroon Government. successes. We are ‘Africa’s best kept secret’ so we need to go out there and tell our story! BirdLife International Africa Partnership – E-bulletin Together for birds and people GEF project meeting On the Sunday prior to the CAP meeting itself, a project meeting, convened by Paulinus Ngeh from the BirdLife Africa West Africa office, kicked off the PDF-B phase of the new GEF-UNDP funded project ‘Enhancing local capacities for sustainable biodiversity action in Africa’. UNDP Regional representative for Southern Africa Nik Sekhran facilitated the meeting which was attended by the project managers from Burundi, Botswana, Rwanda, Liberia and Nigeria. Philipp Van Waechter attended the meeting on behalf of UNOPS. During the meeting, a clear plan of action The CAP 2005 opening ceremony was graced by officials from was developed in order to make the the Cameroon Government who are seen here with the CAP implementation of this PDF-B as smooth as Chair and Dr Mike Rands, the BirdLife International CEO possible. For more information, please contact the BirdLife International regional Project Manager: BirdLife in Cameroon [email protected] On the first day of CAP, Mike Rands, BirdLife’s CEO, presented the past, present and vision for Data Zone BirdLife International’s programme in Cameroon. BirdLife has a long presence in the country, dating back to the 1980s. In 1995, BirdLife started Worldbirds working with CBCS (then COC). The organization Debbie Pain, RSPB’s Head of International has since grown rapidly and is now implementing a Research, gave a presentation on the Worldbirds growing portfolio of projects ranging from initiative (see also our previous e-bulletin). This biodiversity conservation to empowerment of initiative aims to collect data from birders all-over marginalized communities. According to Mike the world in order to make them available to Rands, it is envisioned that the BirdLife Secretariat conservation organisations and the public. It will will “provide the requisite technical, management capture data previously unavailable, will provide support, capacity building, networking and countries with a simple list-based monitoring international linkages to empower and develop scheme and will encourage the collection of new CBCS to fully represent, take forward and oversee data in a more systematic and repeatable way. For BirdLife’s operations and projects in Cameroon.” more details, see www.worldbirds.org or contact [email protected] at the Secretariat. Regional initiatives Science, Policy and Information Dr Stuart Buchart, BirdLife’s Global Species Regional Initiatives 2005 Programme Coordinator, explained to CAP what The CAP input papers provided an overview of the Science, Policy and Information (SPI) recently completed, ongoing and planned ‘regional department at the BirdLife global office does for initiatives’. This overview demonstrates that the the Africa (and the global) Partnership. This varies progress made in terms of developing and from developing indicators for monitoring, species implementing regional (multi-country) projects and sites (IBA) programmes, and key datasets, to across the African region. Where a few years ago refining BirdLife’s policy & advocacy processes, the BirdLife Africa Partnership was involved in forging productive collaborations, and one major regional project, in 2005 eleven projects communicating BirdLife’s messages. For more are being implemented which include more than data, please contact [email protected] one country. Some of them were presented in more and/or the SPI Director [email protected]. detail during the CAP meeting (see below). For more details and/or the whole list of projects, Do you have some hot news? Let us know so we contact [email protected] and/or can prepare a ** News Alert ** for the [email protected] BirdLife website www.birdlife.org! 2 July – September 2005 BirdLife International Africa Partnership – E-bulletin Together for birds and people Species Arinaitwe, the regional IBA Programme Manager for Africa, gave a presentation on its contents, after which Achilles Byaruhanga, the Chair of CAP, The BirdLife Africa Species Working Group officially handed over the strategy to the Director (ASWG) oversees the implementation of the Africa and CEO of BirdLife International, Dr Mike Rands Species Programme. The Species Action Plan (see photo below). (SAP) project is the key activity of the ASWG, with the Darwin-funded follow-up project now concentrating on enabling the Partners and Species Interest Groups to implement the SAPs. During CAP 2005, the recently-appointed ASWG Coordinator Paul Kariuki Ndang’ang’a gave a presentation of the progress and plans of this project. Recommendations from an ASWG convened meeting on 26 July 2005 include the need to: (1) encourage the Africa Partnership to prioritize implementation of Species Action Plans and production of more SAPs (where necessary) in their work; (2) encourage the Africa Partnership to seek opportunities for passing on the training already obtained from the two SAP projects to many of their staff and partners; (3) support Copies of the strategy were disseminated during formation and sustainability of Species Interest the meeting and more copies have been sent to the Groups that take a lead in conserving key species; Partners afterwards. Unknown to the Secretariat at and (4) treat species work as the ‘core business’ of the time of the launch, the Jensen Foundation in the BirdLife Africa Partnership. During the species Denmark has awarded the BirdLife Africa session at CAP, the challenges of implementing Partnership a grant to develop an IBA ‘toolkit’ SAPs and how to overcome them were discussed. which will complement this regional conservation The ‘Species Champion’ approach of monitoring strategy and will facilitate its implementation. critically endangered species was introduced and [email protected] can be contacted for its appropriateness for African species and within more information or copies. the Partnership was discussed thoroughly. It was also seen to be likely to bring in many opportunities for species conservation. Please Monitoring IBAs contact [email protected] for more information on the species programme. IBA monitoring through Remote Sensing Both detailed and basic monitoring of IBAs are already taking place within the network. But IBA [Photo left: the species NOT monitoring within the region is set to become even seen during CAP] more robust through developing a system using remote sensing. A regional project ‘Monitoring IBAs in Africa using remote sensing’ was presented at CAP by Debbie Pain (RSPB). It is a joint project between the Birdlife Africa Sites Partnership, the Birdlife Global Secretariat, the RSPB and the Global Vegetation Monitoring Unit Launch of RIBACS of the European Commission. The project aims to On Tuesday 26 July, the Regional Important Bird look at the feasibility of using remote sensing for Area Conservation Strategy (RIBACS) 2005-2015 monitoring vegetation cover in African IBAs, to was launched. This strategy has three major aims: develop a protocol for monitoring African IBAs to promote standardized approaches in IBA using remote sensing and to investigate the conservation; to promote home-grown