Executive Manager's Message

Spring has finally arrived in the Northern Hemisphere and with it a new batch of Conservation Award Winners. At the end of March, our final selection committee met to decide on award-winning projects for 2011. After an extensive review process and much deliberation by the committee, we settled on 30 projects, including 23 first-time projects that received Future Conservationist Awards, as well as 4 Follow-up Awards and 3 Leadership Awards.

The projects span 19 countries and cover a range of taxonomic groups and habitats. For the full list of this year’s award-winning projects, visit the CLP website. Special thanks go to all those individuals who reviewed proposals for us this year – we had 247 experts contribute 690 reviews for 141 proposals. And all of the great feedback they provided will be shared with the applicants to help them improve their projects and ensure the greatest impact possible.

In the coming months, we will be preparing for several training courses, including a Conservation Management & Leadership training workshop in Canada for 2011 Conservation Award winners, which will be held in June, followed by two courses in July – Writing For Publications, which will be held in Colombia and a Climate Change & Ecosystem Services workshop (location TBD).

We continue to follow the achievements of CLP-supported projects globally – and there are many. As a result of successful outreach and education activities by a CLP-supported team in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the local ministry has added the endemic Cochabamba Mountain-Finch to the official logo used on all government vehicles in the region.

In Nepal, working closely with local stakeholders, a CLP team was instrumental in creating the first ‘Vulture Safe Zone’ (VSZ) for 10 of the 12 known oriental white-rumped vulture colonies in Nepal. The VSZ, which spans 10 districts, was declared a Diclofenac Free Zone and encompasses 5 safe feeding sites for vultures.

Read on for other interesting updates from CLP sponsored projects.

Robyn Dalzen
Executive Manager

CLP Training and RRF Grant Help Respond to Egyptian Conservation Emergency

Extinct Fish Rediscovered by CLP-funded Intern in Southern China

The Cochabamba Mountain-Finch Adorns Official Cars

30 April 2011 Upcoming ICCB Abstract deadline.

5 May 2011 Upcoming CLP Alumni Travel Grant deadline.

14 - 18 May 2011 International Marine Conservation Congress, Victoria, BC, Canada.

20 May 2011 Upcoming CLP ICCB Travel Grant deadline.

12-16 June 2011 International Joint Meeting of the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation & Africa Section of the Society of Conservation Biology, Arush, Tanzania.

September 2011 Student Conference on Conservation Science, Bangalore, India.

12-14 October 2011 Student Conference on Conservation Science, New York, USA.

8-14 November 2011 Neotropical Ornithology Congress, Cusco, Peru. Abstract deadline: May 30, 2011.

News from the Field

Team Awards are granted to teams of three or more individuals who are undertaking high-priority conservation projects. The awards are arranged in a tiered system to allow for progression and include the Future Conservationist Award, Conservation Follow-up Award and Conservation Leadership Award.

AFRICA
A Conservation Framework for Furcifer Chameleons in Madagascar (2006, 2008)
Madagascar Chameleon Project Ends on a High Note! In January 2011, we completed the first conservation assessment of Malagasy chameleon species of the genus Furcifer in an IUCN Red List workshop held in Antananarivo. In addition to the 17 Furcifer species evaluated (the focus of our CLP project), the workshop completed first assessments for an additional 50 chameleons and 289 other reptiles. Based on the provisional results, Furcifer belalandaensis is Critically Endangered, and another three species are Endangered.

Read more about projects in Africa...

ASIA/PACIFIC
Community Awareness and Capacity Building for Endangered Turtle Conservation in Northeast India (2010)
The CLP 2010 award winning team in Assam, India has formed a scientific society named Turtle Conservation and Research Program (TCRP) for safeguarding the freshwater turtle species in northeast India. The TCRP is one of the international collaborating partners of “Year of the Turtle 2011”. The program has started community awareness and capacity building for safeguarding the region’s turtle with programs to document diversity and abundance, nesting surveys and in-situ egg protection.

Strengthening Vulture Safe Zone in Nawalparasi, Nepal (2010)
The concept of a Vulture Safe Zone (VSZ) was developed by CLP grantees from Bird Conservation Nepal not only to secure the survival of vultures in the wild but also to provide a site for future release of captive bred populations. Ten districts constituting the VSZ were declared as Diclofenac Free Zones thanks to collective effort of government line agencies, veterinary community, political parties, community based conservation organizations, international conservation organizations and includes written pledges from veterinarians, para-veterinarians and veterinary pharmacies and exchange of existing diclofenac stock with vulture safe drug meloxicam.

Community-driven Conservation of Cambodian Chelonians (2004, 2005, 2007)
This Cambodian team has won 3 awards from the CLP since 2004. The focus has been on Chelonian conservation and in 2007 the team discovered a new population of the endangered Asian giant soft-shelled turtle (Pelochelys cantorii) along the Mekong River. Although the CLP project has ended, conservation of this species continues in a very special place, the One Hundred Pillar Pagoda (Wat Sor Sor Muoy Roy), as a result of this discovery.

Bat Count Philippines (2003, 2006)
Bat Count Philippines has been working for more than nine years on flying fox research and conservation. In that time, the team has surveyed numerous bat roosts, generating important baseline data on the Philippines’ flying fox populations. The next step for effective conservation management is to learn how these populations are connected and interact with each other. The team has recently discovered a new technique for learning about flying fox populations.

Read more about projects in Asia/Pacific...

EURASIA
CHAGRA'2010: Enhancing Conservation of the Chalk Grasslands in Ukraine (2010)
From the very beginning of the project all members of CHAGRA’2010 team were convinced that nobody but the local people could save the Ukrainian chalk steppe. Last autumn and winter the team worked on education – a principal part of our project aimed to produce a friendly atmosphere for the newly created Dvourechansky national park. The good luck of the team was to meet like-minded people from the Center of Children’s Creativity in Dvourechnaya town.

Conservation of White-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala) in Russian Federation. (2006, 2008, 2010)
In December of last year the conservation centre “Strizh”, an NGO, launched the process of establishing a regional protected area in the area of the Karasuk town lakes. This territory is the key habitat of the White-headed duck (WHD). According to the scientific research conducted by the conservation centre Strizh in 2006 and 2007, 10 couples nest here, which is 10% of the total number of nesting pairs in South Western Siberia.

Conservation Action Planning: Application on the Ground, Sakhalin Island, Russia (2008, 2009)
This team, supported by the CLP in 2008 and again in 2009, continues to work on Conservation Action Planning for the Sakhalin Salmon. In the middle of December the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk hosted the meeting of a working group, which was arranged by the autonomous noncommercial organization “Sakhalin Salmon Initiative”. At the meeting entitled “Conservation Action Planning: from recommendations to practice“, many questions were discussed on arrangement of environmental protection measures directed to prevention of different threats to territories and fish: eco regions, river basins, salmon species of industrial significance or under extinction threat.

Read more about projects in Eurasia...

LATIN AMERICA
Araripe Manakin Conservation Center, Brazil (2004, 2007, 2010)
The Araripe Manakin Conservation Project reached a new milestone recently by establishing it’s first official conservation center in the city of Crato, which is located at the base of the “Chapada do Araripe” in the extreme south of the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará, close to where the only known population of this critically endangered bird species occurs.

Dipper project: Conservation and Status of Cinclus schulzi in Argentina (2010)
Cinclus schulzi is a dipper endemic of the streams and rivers of the subtropical montane forests of Southern Yungas of Bolivia and Argentina. This team has complete assessments of 31 rivers and preliminary results suggest that the species might be more restricted in range than previously thought.

Assessment of Seabird Bycatch in Peruvian Artisanal Fisheries (2005)
This 2005 CLP team, together with the NGO Pro Delphinus, is continuing to work on endangered species conservation and they have started 2011 recharged! Pro Delphinus still focuses on developing research on marine endangered species that are threatened due to bycatch from artisanal fisheries in Peru. In February, the NGO started a new sea turtle project in Constante, a fishermen community in the north of Peru.

Read more about projects in Latin America...

CLP Alumni: Where Are They Now?

A bird’s-eye view of conservation – Maxim Koshkin

The Student Conference of Conservation Science (SCCS) in Cambridge is one of the foremost organised gatherings for students and future conservation leaders in the world. It also attracts today’s leading figures in international conservation, such as Tony Whitten, FFI’s Regional Director of Asia/Pacific, who recently blogged about SCCS 2011. This year, 12 CLP alumni attended the SCCS, one of which was Maxim Koshkin, leader of two CLP-funded projects.

Eight years ago, during the university summer break, Maxim took up an internship at the NABU (German Society for Nature Protection) where a colleague suggested he apply for a CLP award. Not put off by his lack of fundraising experience, Maxim brought together a team of students and set about planning a research project in the Korgalzhyn wetlands, an important habitat for the white-headed duck (Oxiura leucocephala) and sociable lapwing (Vanellus gregarious). To read more about Maxim, click here.

Final Reports

These recently concluded projects have had some exciting results. To download a pdf copy of a project report, click on the links below.

Project Websites

Check out project websites for updated news and images from award winning teams in the field: