What's
New @ Ramsar What's
New @ Ramsar
1 February 2000
Headline
story. Ramsar Centre
set for Austria. Michaela Bodner,
WWF Austria, reports that on World Wetland Day, Feb. 2nd, plans will be
announced for a Ramsar Centre in the Waldviertel (Lower Austria) as a further step of the
implementation of the Ramsar Convention. Only recently, Austria has designated its 10th
Ramsar site, the "Waldviertel ponds, peat bogs and floodplains"
which forms an ecological unit with the Czech Ramsar sites "Trebon fishponds"
and "Trebon peatlands". Considering that the whole region of the Northern
Waldviertel (northernmost part of Lower Austria, bordering the Czech Republic) holds a
network of important wetlands of varying sizes, WWF Austria has worked out a concept for a
Ramsar Centre in the Waldviertel; the plan is backed by the Austrian Ministry of
Environment, Youth and Family and the Government of Lower Austria, and co-financed by the
European Union. The idea behind this centre is to create a body responsible for local
wetland agendas and to implement the values of wetlands into regional development. The
work of the centre will focus on the monitoring of wetlands, on environmental education
and on public relations work. A strong cooperation with the Czech Biosphere Reserve
Administration in Trebon is planned and will be an important key to the success of the
centre. The building of the centre should start in 2000 to be finished in 2001 for the 30th
anniversary of the Ramsar Convention. For further information contact: Michaela Bodner,
WWF Waldviertel, Kirchberg am Walde (stuetzpunkt@waldviertel.wwf.at)." [1/2/00]
Headline story. Mr
Najam Khurshid set to join the Ramsar Bureau. The Secretary General is pleased to announce the appointment of a new Regional
Coordinator for Asia, replacing Ms Rebecca D’Cruz, who returns to
Malaysia at the end of February after a very successful 3-year tenure in the Bureau. Mr Najam
Khurshid, from Pakistan, has been with WWF-Pakistan for the past ten years and is
presently serving as Conservation Director, in addition to being in charge of the
WWF-Pakistan Wetlands Programme. Prior to that he worked with the Government of Pakistan
in the Sindh Wildlife Department and has been visiting professor of Wildlife Management
and Conservation at Jinnah University for Women. With an MSc degree in Zoology,
specializing in Limnology and Wildlife Management, he is presently pursuing his PhD on
"Waterfowl Ecology of the Karachi Coast". He has written a considerable number
of papers, reports, and articles on conservation, community participation, and wildlife
issues, including a "Wetlands Action Plan for Pakistan". It is hoped that Mr
Khurshid will be able to take up his post in Gland on or soon after 15 March. [31/1/00]
Another
headline story. Ramsar
at the CBD's SBSTTA5.
Dr Bill Phillips, our departing Deputy Secretary General, and
Dr Nick Davidson, our DSG-designate, are in Montreal for the
fifth meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity's Subsidiary Body for
Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), where they are joined
by the Chair of Ramsar's Scientific and Technical Review Panel, Dr Jorge
Jiménez of Costa Rica. Dr Jiménez is slated to introduce the draft
CBD/Ramsar Joint Work Plan
for 2000-2001. Ramsar is also sponsoring a side event on the River
Basin Initiative, a joint venture between Ramsar and the CBD which
is being implemented by the Global Environment Network. (29/1/00)
Who's Where?
SBSTTA5: Dr Bill Phillips and Dr Nick Davidson, our Deputy Secretaries General passing in the night, or rather collaborating in Montreal, are at the CBD's SBSTTA meeting, Dr Jorge Jiménez, Chair of Ramsar's Scientific and Technical Review Panel. Results will follow soon. [30/1/00]
New
on the Site: More
plans for World Wetlands Day;
many more Country Profiles, A-N
so far, and a bunch at the end of the alphabet as well;
Spanish and French
version of the TOR for the STRP Focal Points (hooray!).
[30/1/00]
Wetlands
International names new Science Coordinator. Wetlands
International's International Unit took a hard hit recently, losing
its Science Coordinator to the Ramsar Bureau!! (Dr Nick Davidson
will be dragging in his large filing cabinets and settling into our Deputy Secretary
General's office over the next week or two), but characteristically, they've
bounced back, and today they've announced the appointment of Dr
Douglas Taylor as Nick's replacement in the Wageningen headquarters.
Doug comes from the UK and has headed expert missions in several parts of Africa
and has long experience in Ramsar-related affairs. More
details?: Here is the announcement. [29/1/00]
Announcement:
Wetlands in Venezuela - new book available.
In the framework of World Wetlands Day, the Venezuela Committee of IUCN-The
World Conservation Union is launching a new book, Conservación de
Humedales en Venezuela: Inventario, diagnóstico ambiental y estrategia
by Rafael Rodríguez Altamiranda, published with the
support of the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) and IUCN's Programa Regional de Humedales.
Here is the announcement (Spanish only
so far). [30/1/00]
Interesting
Web site: TVE, the
Television Trust for the Environment, has an interesting article about World
Wetlands Day, with mention of some of their own products that are relevant: http://194.72.163.91/news/doc.cfm?aid=543
. [27/1/00]
Ramsar
Bureau welcomes new Intern, toasts a birthday.
The secretariat welcomed Evans Okong'o (Kenya), who replaces
Ms Musonda Mumba (Zambia) as Intern for Africa and Assistant
to the Regional Coordinator, who is now with the Freshwater Programme at WWF
International. Not to let the festive mood escape without a fight, the staff
immediately moved on to a birthday party for Alexander Belokurov,
Intern for Europe, drinking fiery Russian things and eating Russian stuff that
made the IUCN Species Survival Commission across the corridor pretty restive.
Here's a biographical profile on Mr Okong'o
and a few more photos. [28/1/00]
Wetlands
International publishes action plan for Russia. Simon Nash (Nash@Wetlands.agro.nl) writes: "Wetlands
International's Moscow office has just published the Strategy and Action Plan for Wetland
Conservation in the Russian Federation (in Russian). An English version will be published
soon. The publication is a result of the National Wetland Conference that was held in
February 1999 in Moscow by the State Committee of Environment Protection and Wetands
International, which was the first intersectoral and national conference of its kind, with
about 400 participants. Several working groups of Russian scientists and policy makers
have since been working on various sections of it. The publication represents a major
milestone for our Russian Programme, as it will form the basis of Wetlands
International’s programme development in Russia for the coming years. For more
information contact: Olga Anisimova: oanisimova@wwfnet.org."
[27/1/00]
New
Exec for Wetlands International - AEME.
Wetlands International – Africa, Europe, Middle East is pleased to announce
that its new Executive Director, James McCuaig of Canada, has
taken up his duties in the Netherlands as of January 10, 2000. Jim was selected
from several outstanding candidates for the position, through an international
search process run by the AEME Regional Council, with extensive staff input.
Here's the whole tale. [26/1/00]
Iranian
officials visit the Ramsar Bureau. From
20 to 24 January 2000, the Ramsar Convention Bureau played host to the first
meeting of the Steering Committee for the project on the ‘Conservation
of Iranian Wetlands’. The six-member team from the Islamic Republic of
Iran was led by Mr Anoushirvan Najafi, Deputy Head of the Department
of Environment and National Coordinator for the wetland project. This is a Block
B Project Development Facility (PDF-B) to establish a mechanism for the development
of a full project aimed at conserving globally significant components of wetland
biodiversity in a limited number of sites that are facing mounting pressures.
More detail right here.
[26/1/00]
Spain
introduces Strategic Plan for Wetlands.
The Ministerio de Medio Ambiente of Spain has announced that, following approval
in October 1999 by the Comisión Nacional de Protección de la Naturaleza, a new
Strategic Plan is being put into implementation. Entitled the "Plan
Estratégico Español para la Conservación y el Uso Racional de los Humedales,
en el marco de los ecosistemas acuáticos de que dependen"
(‘Spanish Strategic Plan for the conservation and wise use of wetlands,
in the framework of the aquatic ecosystems upon which they depend’), the
94-page document includes thorough introductory material with history and objectives
and a valuable analysis of existing laws in Spain’s Autonomous Regions
(or provinces), followed by a detailed plan cross-referenced to the Ramsar Strategic
Plan 1997-2002, the Ramsar Convention itself, and the relevant Resolutions and
Recommendations of the Conference of the Contracting Parties. Copies are available
from the Secretaría General de Medio Ambiente, Gran Via de San Francisco 4,
28005 Madrid (fax +34 91 597 5564) and the
text of the Plan is reprinted on this Web site (Spanish only).
[18/1/00]
La Comisión Nacional de Protección de la Naturaleza de España, que preside la Excma. Sra. Ministra de Medio Ambiente e incluye a todos los gobiernos autonómicos, aprobó el pasado mes de octubre el Plan Estratégico Español para la Conservación y el Uso Racional de los Humedales. Tal como se afirma en el Preámbulo, "El proceso de desarrollo de las previsiones contenidas en este documento, supone una gran oportunidad a nivel español de coordinar esfuerzos y de integración mutua de políticas sectoriales a menudo alejadas en el ámbito administrativo pero concurrentes en el territorio." Con la aprobación del Plan, España hace un gran avance hacia la plena implementación de la Convención de Ramsar. Cuando las Partes Contratantes se reúnan en ese país en el 2002 para la COP8 de Ramsar, tendrán la oportunidad de apreciar de cerca los progresos realizados. La Oficina de Ramsar ha decidido poner el texto completo del Plan en el sitio Web para que otros países, especialmente los de habla hispana, puedan beneficiarse de este importante esfuerzo del Gobierno Español. Delmar Blasco, Secretario General
Sierra
Leone welcomed as the Convention's 118th Contracting Party! The
Bureau is very pleased to announce that on 13 December 1999, the Hon.
Dr Sama Siama Banya, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International
Cooperation in the government of Sierra Leone, deposited with UNESCO that nation’s
instrument of accession to the Convention, as amended by the Paris Protocol
(1982) and accepting the amendments to Articles 6 and 7 (Regina Amendments,
1987). The Convention will enter into force for Sierra Leone on 13 April 2000,
as Ramsar's 118th Contracting Party. The Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and
Marine Resources, the Hon. Okere A. Adams, has informed the
Bureau that the Chief Conservator of Forests, within his ministry, will serve
as Administrative Authority, and that a National Ramsar (Wetlands) Committee
has already been established, to consist of 4 Ministry personnel, 2 representatives
of the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone, 3 from the Division of Marine Resources,
and 2 from the Ministry of International Affairs and Rural Development (Council
of Paramount Chiefs). Sierra Leone has designated as its first Wetland of International
Importance (the Convention's 1014th) the "Sierra
Leone River Estuary", a 295,000-hectare piece of coastline
stretching from Cape Point on the Freetown Peninsula across to the Bunce Creek.
Please consult a brief description
of the site right here. [15/1/00]
Announcement:
Call for applications for Ramsar Internship for the Americas. The Ramsar Bureau is seeking applications for the position
of Intern for the Americas, to assist the Regional Coordinator for the same region. The
posting runs for one year from 1 August 2000, and applications are due by 29 February
2000. The position requires demonstrated fluency in both English and Spanish. (14/1/00)
Web Stats.
Ramsar Web site 50% better. Scientifically- and philosophically-oriented readers may
immediately ask: 50% better than what? Margarine? The answer is 50%
better-trafficked than the last time our IUCN colleague Dan Hinckley ran
the statistics programme. Over the year 1999, the Ramsar Web site was pleased to
receive an average of 8,893 User Sessions per month
(up from 6,000 per month a half-year ago, and 106,719 in total for the year), presumably
heavily-loaded towards the latter half of that period. This amounts to 293 readers per day
over the year (minus our Web Editor proofreading and constantly having to correct his own
mistakes), with 496,248 of our pages viewed over the course of the blessedly final year of
the Old Millennium (note the two n's). 2.29% of these page-views came from our homebase,
Switzerland, the rest from elsewhere! Nationally-speaking, the hits came from 144 nations,
not excluding the Faroe Islands and 11 hits from (watch closely) "USSR (former)"
[and about 50% from the USA of course, followed by UK, Canada, and Australia, but with 89
from Croatia and 68 from "Arab Emirates, United"]. 243 people downloaded Excel
files (accountants, probably), though more than 9,000 PDFs went down in the same period.
(Sixties people may be amused to learn that 473 user sessions are classified as
"military".) The Least Requested Page is entitled "This page has
moved" (1 viewer). The most popular downloads, all of them versions of the Ramsar
List: 652 people downloaded the unwieldy thing as a Microsoft Word document, 636 as an
Adobe PDF file, 191 as an RTF, 158 as a Mac 5.1, and 135 as a WordPerfect 5.1 file (UN
personnel presumably); after the Ramsar List, the next most popular download was the River
Basins Initiative in Microsoft Word, must have been a word-of-mouth campaign! The average
user spent 19:19 minutes on the Ramsar site, up from 17 minutes last year, which may
suggest that as the site grows more and more, people are getting lost in it and emerging
only at the end of the spring thaw. [15/1/00]
Announcement:
Danone-Evian / FFEM / Ramsar / MedWet 4/ Eurosite meeting: Network of Mediterranean,
Caspian and Black Sea Deltas, 28 Sept - 1st Oct 2000, Odessa, Ukraine. Following the first workshop under this project held in
the Po delta in January 1999, the final gathering of the 10 participating deltas will take
place by the Black Sea in the autumn of 2000. The technical theme is currently being
discussed between participants, in a bottom-up fashion. This meeting will also review the
achievements of the bilateral exchange programme currently under way, and propose future
directions to keep this network alive. Participation is under invitation only. This
meeting will be twinned to another one organised between 25-27 September in Odessa, too,
where the problems and threats for wetland and waterbird conservation for the region will
be discussed. Together, these two meetings could potentially provide the forum to launch
an initiative for the conservation of wetlands in the Black Sea region, as MedWet has been
doing since 1993 in the Mediterranean. For further information please contact: Dr
Christian Perennou, Project Leader, Station Biologique de la Tour du Valat, perennou@tour-du-valat.com or Dr.Igor
Ivanenko, Wetlands International (Kiev office), at uawetl@carrier.kiev.ua . [15/1/00]
Society
of Wetland Scientists awards two grants in the Ramsar Support Framework. The
SWS has announced details of the US$ 5,000 awards granted under its Ramsar Support
Framework. First, to Wetlands International Cambodia
- Mekong Programme and the Cambodia Ministry of Environment
to survey potential Ramsar sites in Cambodia, and second, in a matching award
provided by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, to
Dr. Eduardo M. da Silva, Institute
of Biology da UFBA, Campus de Ondina, Brazil, for surveys of potential Ramsar
sites in that Party. The project profiles
and basic info on the SWS programme are available right here. [13/1/00]
JAWGP
invites World Wetlands Day messages for Web site. Yoshihiko
Miyabayashi ( yym@mub.biglobe.ne.jp ) reports that the Japan Association
for Wild Geese Protection, JAWGP, has translated the Convention's WWD 2000 brochure
into Japanese and posted it on a Web site devoted to "World Wetlands Day
in Miyagi, Japan", http://www2m.biglobe.ne.jp/~wwd/ , which, as in past
years, records JAWGP's plans and activities for WWD. Yoshi has also posted a
request on the Ramsar Forum for messages from around the world. Help
them if you can!
Dear Ramsar Forum, from Yoshihiko MIYABAYASHI, JAWGP. We, some Japanese colleagues, have been inspired to invite messages celebrating wetlands of international importance in Japan and to disseminate them on the Internet around the World Wetlands Day, 2 February 2000. It is expected to be one of the awareness tools in schools, wetland observation centres, and other educational facilities in the country. We also wish links to the world beyond the gap of languages. We would like to show the messages from wetlands in Japan to the world with translation into English, and the messages from the world to Japanese society in Japanese language. We just opened the Web site for the messages and are now INVITING the messages celebrating the wetlands around the world. Please find more details on the Web site. ******** World Wetlands Day 2000 - Messages around the World. "Celebrating our Wetlands of International Importance", < http://www.jawgp.org/wwd2000 >, Contact: wwd2000@jawgp.org . [13/1/00]
Austria
designates its 10th Ramsar site. Austria
has designated its 10th Ramsar site as of 22 December 1999, the Convention’s
1013th globally, called "Waldviertel ponds, peat bogs
and floodplains" (13,000 ha) in NiederÖsterreich (Lower Austria),
bringing that Party’s total Ramsar surface area to 115,772 hectares. Much
of it has already been designated as Natura 2000 sites under the EC Birds and
Habitats and Species Directives. The site is situated in the southeasternmost
part of the central European mountain region, and contains a number of small
and large riverine, peat bog, and pond wetlands. Crucial to the area’s
water regime, the Lainsitz River is a common river connecting to the Czech Republic’s
Ramsar sites Trebon fishponds and Trebon peatlands (the ‘Lusnice’
river in Czech) with high commercial value since the 13th century.
Peat was extracted for fuel for the glass industry until the end of the 19th
century, but no longer. Hunting is common in all parts of the site. The site
enjoys high species diversity, especially in plants, dragonflies, amphibians,
and birds, with rare species like the mammals Lutra lutra and Micromys
minutus, mussels Margaritifera margaritifera and Unio crassus,
and the crustacean Astacus astacus. The rivers and ponds perform valuable
functions in flood control and water retention and serve as a hydrological buffer
zone. Ownership is very mixed, partly publicly-owned by local and national entities
and partly owned by small, large, and very large private landowners. Many parts
of the Ramsar site have management plans implemented under an EU LIFE project
by WWF-Austria, and ongoing research is carried out by WWF-Austria and BirdLife
Austria. See some excellent photos
here. [12/1/00]
Argentina names 7th
Ramsar site, tops 1 million hectares. The Lagunas de Guanacache (approx.
580,000 hectares), the 1012th Ramsar site, is a 200km-long system of linked lagoons and
marshes fed by the Mendoza and San Juan Rivers in the provinces of those names. The system
drains into the Desaguadero River and covers an area of some 10,000 square km. The
dominant wetland type is "seasonal/intermittent freshwater lakes", but the site
also includes "seasonal/intermittent/irregular rivers/streams/creeks",
"seasonal/intermittent/ freshwater marshes/pools", "shrub-dominated
wetlands", and some other less frequent wetland types. There is a rich biodiversity
associated with the system, with more than 50 species of waterbirds. The system has
suffered a number of natural and anthropogenic alterations which have considerably reduced
the area covered by the lagoons and marshes. A rehabilitation program is being
implemented. The local communities include some 2000 people, known as the
"laguneros", whose customs and traditions are based in the lagoons and their
resources. The provincial governments of Mendoza and San Juan are cooperating closely in
the site designation and management. In 1999, the Ramsar/US Government Wetlands for the
Future Initiative financed a First Training Workshop for the Local Community and
Intermediate Institutions for the Rehabilitation and Management of the Lagunas de
Guanacache. The designation of the Lagunas as a Ramsar site is a further step in the
efforts to rehabilitate and conserve the system. Argentina now has 7 sites, totaling
1,000,039 ha, under the Ramsar "umbrella". [10/1/00]
More
to follow. Watch this space.
Feedback and suggestions to: the Ramsar Convention Bureau, Rue Mauverney
28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland (tel +41 22 999 0170, fax +41 22 999 0169, e-mail
). Updated
regularly by Dwight Peck, Ramsar Bureau.
Back
Issues of the Bulletin Board. Early in every month, the current edition
of the Bulletin Board is copied to the Ramsar Archives
page, and you can dig through the back issues there -- their contents are still
indexed on the Global Index page
in perpetuity.
visitors
to this site since........ Wait . . . . . . . ? . . . . . . ?? Oooh, I
must have dropped it.