P R E S S R E L E A S E  from UNEP // WOW (Wings Over Wetlands) // The Ramsar Convention.

Wings Over Wetlands from the Arctic to the Cape –
Project launched on bird migration routes in Africa and Eurasia.
Bonn/ Cambridge/ Gland/ Wageningen, 20 November 2006 :

Launched today, the Wings Over Wetlands (WOW) Project is the largest international
wetland and waterbird conservation initiative ever to take place in the African-Eurasian
region. This 12 million US dollar project aims to conserve the critical areas needed by
waterbirds migrating across these continents.

Key international organizations involved in the study and conservation of
waterbirds are joining forces to improve understanding and flyway-scale
protection of migratory waterbirds across Africa and Eurasia. Waterbirds migrate
vast distances, and the project is designed accordingly, covering
the entire African-Eurasian area, including Africa, Europe, the Middle
East, Central Asia, Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago.

The German Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel congratulated with
the words:    “Without the wintering areas for the white stork in Africa or the
breeding areas in Siberia for the geese hibernating in the Wadden Sea, all protection
efforts in Europe are useless.  Acknowledging the need for wide ranging
international flyway cooperation I welcome the international support of this
project including an important German contribution of one million Euros”

The WOW Project is sponsored by the Global Environment Facility (GEF)
through the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the German Federal Ministry for
Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the Secretariat of the
African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (UNEP/AEWA Secretariat) and
several other donors. The project will help foster international
collaboration along the entire flyways, build capacity for monitoring and
conservation, and demonstrate best practice in the conservation and
wise use of wetlands in 12 selected countries.

The WOW Project was designed and is now being implemented as a
collaborative effort between Wetlands International and BirdLife International,
with support from the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and
UNEP/GEF. “Conservation of migratory waterbirds will depend
on international cooperation between all countries on the migration routes
as well as the engagement of local people in conserving the critical wetland
sites. In developing countries, the livelihoods of local people as well as
waterbirds depend on these wetlands and the water supplies
that sustain them. The project will demonstrate how local and global action
for wetlands conservation can benefit both people and nature”, says Ward
Hagemeijer of Wetlands International, the global NGO leading the project.

“The WOW project is unique in combining a flyway-level perspective with an
emphasis on practical conservation at the site and country level”, says Leon
Bennun, Director of Science, Policy and Information at BirdLife International.
“Waterbird migrations are an extraordinary and very valuable natural phenomenon,
which this project will help safeguard for the future.”

Through its unique flyway-scale conservation approach, Wings Over Wetlands will
enhance international conservation efforts to improve the conditions and
management of waterbirds and key wetland sites. The project will also pull
together currently disparate data to create a flyway-level information portal
that can assist conservation efforts and facilitate appropriate policy responses
across the region. The central web-based resource is being developed by the
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and will enhance the ability to
identify the networks of key sites throughout Africa and Eurasia migratory
waterbirds use and depend on during their seasonal migrations.

WOW operates in close coordination with the UNEP/AEWA Secretariat, the
Ramsar Convention Secretariat and a wide range of local and international
partners along the African-Eurasian flyways.  “WOW is particularly significant
as it will help countries to simultaneously deliver their commitments under a
number of key Multilateral Environmental Agreements through one set of
coordinated actions”, says Nick Davidson, Deputy Secretary General of the
Ramsar Convention Secretariat.

“WOW supports the implementation of the AEWA Agreement in all 119 of its
range states in Africa and Eurasia. We are working closely with the WOW team to
maximize the involvement and collaboration with all our partners and countries
across the AEWA region”, says Bert Lenten, Executive Secretary of AEWA, the
international treaty dedicated to the conservation of waterbirds in Africa and
Eurasia. Migratory waterbirds and the wetlands they use to complete their
seasonal migrations are indispensable components of biodiversity and represent
enormous recreational and economic benefits. Their ecology is still poorly
understood and habitats and species are under increasing threat worldwide. WOW
will help identify sites that are critically important for waterbirds to
complete their annual life cycle such as staging areas and wintering grounds
that will be useful in assessing problems these species encounter on their
annual journeys.

“Migrating birds see no borders. Conserving them and their critical
habitats may only be achieved through improved collaboration between national
governments, local and international conservation organizations and local
communities. The WOW initiative will facilitate the exchange
of expertise and synergies between a broad range of partners towards this
common goal”, concludes Edoardo Zandri, Chief Technical Advisor of the WOW
Project.

For further details regarding the Wings Over Wetlands (WOW) Project, please
see:   www.flywaysproject.org

For more information please contact Florian Keil, Information Officer
UNEP/AEWA, on Tel: +49 (0) 228 815 2451, E-mail:  info at flywaysproject.org
Or
Alex Kaat, Head of Communication at Wetlands International, on Tel: +31 (0)
50601917, E-mail:  Alex.Kaat at Wetlands.org

Adrian Long, Head of Communications at BirdLife International, on Tel: +44
(0)1223 279812, E-mail:  Adrian.Long at birdlife.org
Nick Davidson, Deputy Secretary General at the Ramsar Convention, on Tel:
+41 22 999 01 71,

SustainabiliTank.info takes special interest in this project because it sees in it a great example
of what humans can do if they are really interested in preserving nature.

We credit Ahim Steiner, the new head of UNEP, and former head of the Gland, Switzerland based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) - having seen in Kenya/Tanzania that man created frontiers have no meaning for wildlife, it is obvious, as the German Minister of the Environment has implied, that we must resort to Supra-National structures in order to plan for planet earth and its natural inhabitants. It is encouraging that GEF - the funding arm of the World Bank - got involved in this. We hope they could also look up Ramsar Convention’s implication to delta areas used for extraction of oil, i.e. in Nigeria and Burma (Miramar) where wetlands have been destroyed in order to satisfy the greed for oil.