Spike Millington attended the Implementation Meeting of the Arctic Migratory Bird Initiative  (AMBI) at Texel, Netherlands on April 4-7th, organized by East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) Partners Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF). Evgeny Syroechkovskiy, EAAFP Focal Point for Russia and Rick Lanctot, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) represented Arctic countries in our Flyway and Evgeny was appointed as AMBI Chair for the next year. Arctic Council observer countries China, Republic of Korea and Singapore were also represented. Funding for an AMBI Coordinator based in the EAAF region was discussed and partial funding identified. AMBI will hold a workshop back-to-back with EAAFP MOP9 in January 2017 in Singapore.

With the presence of observer countries, participants were about to discuss priority actions in the AMBI workplan for China and Korea, as well as Arctic countries, and several follow-up actions were proposed. India was also represented and increasingly we are seeing shorebirds from India using the EAAF.

Presentations on the Wadden Sea Initiative demonstrated remarkable parallels with the Yellow Sea in terms of the pivotal importance of the area as a migratory bottleneck. The Wadden Sea is a tri-country World Heritage Site and there was much discussion during the workshop on the potential for the Yellow Sea to be nominated as a World Heritage site, following a strategic plan and then individual site nominations with the larger area. The Common Wadden Sea Secretariat already has an MOU with the Government of Korea. The upcoming proposed tri-lateral Yellow Sea workshop to follow up on Resolution 28 of the 2012 World Conservation Congress, planned for later this year, will provide a good opportunity to explore this further.

Discussions were also held on implementation of the The African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) Lesser White-fronted Goose Action Plan for the EAAF, which support a major population of the species.