The Ramsar Bulletin Board, 1 February 2000

Headline story.Ramsar Centre set for Austria. Michaela Bodner, WWF Austria, reports that on World Wetland Day, Feb. 2^nd, 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 10^th 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 30^th 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 moreCountry 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 estrategiaby 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]

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 10^th Ramsar site as of 22 December 1999, the Convention’s 1013^th 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 13^th century. Peat was extracted for fuel for the glass industry until the end of the 19^th 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.