by EAAFP Secretariat

Field trip to Dashinchilen Tsagaan wetlands [EAAF114] © Mongolian Ornithological Society

Managers of all five EAAFP Flyway Network Sites, seven potential sites and several Ramsar sites participated, some travelling up to two days to attend, and were eager to share their experiences and learn new strategies.

The workshop was conducted in Mongolian (with presentations from EAAFP and Ramsar staff simultaneously translated), and demonstrated the knowledge, experience and enthusiasm of the participants.

The presentations from the site managers focused on existing and emerging threats to wetlands. Recurrent threats were overgrazing and disturbance from livestock and humans as well as fire and droughts. During the discussions, participants identified necessary management actions, their costs and feasibility of implementation. Site managers learned how to write proposals for different amounts of money and thought hard of what the best option would be for their site for a given amount. They all promised to conduct some low- or no-cost actions next year. Participants enjoyed the roleplaying section as stakeholders with conflicting interests. After a while they had to solve the conflict and come to an agreement. We saw some truly creative solutions!

We finalised missing Site Information Sheets (including boundaries) and helped site managers fill out forms for the potential sites. We also discussed collaboration for the future, including potential sister site relationships for key Mongolian species, such as White-naped Crane, Asian Dowitcher, Whooper Swan and Swan Goose and shared ideas on how to develop a more cohesive national Flyway Site Network, that can be a model for other Partner countries.

As a result we now have a Mongolian Country webpage while the Mongolian language page is under way, to encourage information sharing and network among Mongolian site managers and others. We hope this will be a good start and eventually help the Mongolian national partnership to develop further in the near future.

For more photos, visit EAAFP Flickr page. All the photos are taken by the Mongolian Ornithological Society.

Presentations are available here.