The Conference, held in Latin America for the first time, attracted over 900 delegates – a record for the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) – representing Parties, non-Parties, IGOs, NGOs and the media together with a large number of leading experts guiding global conservation efforts for the world’s avian, aquatic and terrestrial migratory species. From our region, Australia, Mongolia, the Philippines and New Zealand are members of CMS. There was an excellent suite of side events on flyways, migratory birds, dealing with threats to migratory birds and new research perspectives. Dr. Judit Szabo organised the side event “Challenges and success stories in migratory waterbird conservation in the East-Asian Australasian Flyway”. Even though it was the last event of the conference, held at 8 pm on Friday night, about 50 people attended. After a background presentation on EAAFP by Dr. Szabo, Ms. Nicola Crockford discussed the Beijing declaration, and each of the EAAFP member countries talked about their involvement in the Partnership and the CMS nomination of new shorebird species and Dr. Taej Mundkur presented the Waterbird Census. Major achievements of the conference for EAAFP were:

–       EAAFP is added into the resolution about ecological networks.
–       4 concerted action species accepted (focal point for Bar-tailed godwit is France, Red knot: Netherlands, Far Eastern Curlew: Australia and Great knot: Philippines).

• The draft official meeting report can be found here along with all the other conference documents: http://www.cms.int/en/meeting/eleventh-meeting-conference-parties-cms#cop11-documents.
• A relevant article by Bradnee Chambers, Executive Secretary of CMS: A Substantive Summary of Critical Outcomes
• Some pictures from the meeting are here: http://www.iisd.ca/cms/cop11/7nov.html.
• For further information about the meeting see: http://www.iisd.ca/cms/cop11/