International Coordination
Meeting Agrees on Plan of Action to Address
the Issue of Bird Trapping Along the Mediterranean
Coasts of Egypt and Libya
Bonn, 5 December 2013
- The Government of Egypt, in cooperation
with Germany, Switzerland and other partners,
has pledged to assess and further address
the issue of unregulated hunting and bird
netting practices along the Mediterranean
coast of Egypt.
The agreement came as
top-level officials from those countries
joined representatives from the Convention
on Migratory Species (CMS) and its relevant
Agreements, NGOs and key wildlife experts
at a one-day meeting at the UN Campus in
Bonn, Germany on 29 November.
FURTHER RESOURCES
Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian
Migratory Waterbirds(AEWA)
The meeting, organized and facilitated by
the UNEP-administered Secretariat of the
African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement
(AEWA) and sponsored by the Government of
Germany, sought to take stock of available
data on the issue of bird netting.
It resulted in a Plan
of Action agreed by all stakeholders, which
aims to ensure that the practice of bird
trapping in Egypt and Libya is both sustainable
and legal, and calls for efforts to better
understand current trends in hunting and
trapping.
Egyptian Minister of
Environment, Laila Iskandar, said, "The
Egyptian Government is working towards strengthening
the enforcement of domestic laws which limit
hunting and stipulate specifications for
the nets so as to leave openings for bird
species to complete their migration cycle.
At the same time, Egypt welcomes cooperation
with international partners to improve and
strengthen enforcement and further assessments."
“The Egyptian Government,
in cooperation with its Swiss counterpart,
is currently carrying out a study to fill
in gaps in current data. The problem of
hunting birds has other socio-economic dimensions
and we need to work with local communities
to find alternative livelihood activities
for those who have traditionally relied
on bird hunting as a source of income,"
she added.
The hunting and trapping
of migratory birds in Egypt and Libya -
in particular through the use of mist nets
along vast stretches of the Mediterranean
coast - have become issues of growing public
concern in a number of countries. Despite
the presence of a number of regulatory frameworks,
the challenge lies in the proper enforcement
of these regulations.
The agreed Plan of Action
includes four main objectives, ranging from
increasing knowledge on the scale, impact,
socio-economic and legal aspects of bird
trapping, to ensuring that effective legislation
and regulations are in place and being adequately
enforced.
The plan also includes
elements on building capacity of local Government,
NGOs and local communities to effectively
address the bird trapping issue as well
as to increase awareness and promote bird
conservation in both countries and internationally.
“The action points which
were identified in Bonn are targeted and
clear”, said CMS Executive Secretary Bradnee
Chambers. “We now have a strong basis for
effective and coordinated actions on the
ground in the months and years to come.”
He added: “The agreement
of the Plan of Action is a sterling example
of collaboration between diverse partners
under the auspices of an environmental convention.
It proves that we can work together in a
way that not only brings together the efforts
of stakeholders, but actually amplifies
them.”
Quail catching in Egypt
is a traditional form of hunting that takes
place during the autumn season every year.
Under the Egyptian law, licenses are issued
to local communities to catch quail. In
recent years, however, the number of quail
around the world has been seen to decline
due to hunting and a number of other factors
- including pollution, habitat destruction,
poisoning and climate change.
While quails themselves
are not endangered, their hunting frequently
results in the bycatch of many more non-huntable
and protected species.
The Nature and Biodiversity
Conservation Union (NABU), a German environmental
NGO, recently helped to raise awareness
of the issue of illegal and indiscriminate
trapping through a petition of 115,000 signatures.
NABU has also made a commitment to continue
to support and implement the agreed Plan
of Action with part of the funds it raised
in the recent campaign.
