Programme Manager's Message

This month we have more news than ever before, so many thanks to all who contributed. It’s great to read about all the many conservation and research success stories in which programme award winners have played a key role. After celebrating the Programme’s 15th Anniversary in style at the Society for Conservation Biology Meeting in Brazil this past July, the Programme team has been developing plans for 2006 awards to ensure that we continue to support valuable contributions to conservation. We’ve made some changes to the awards this year, so please read on for more details.

2006 Awards – New Deadline, New Criteria, New Procedure
I am pleased to say that BP has committed support to the BP Conservation Programme for the next 10 years. Over the past few months, we’ve been working with all our partners to make some changes to the programme, and have decided to focus our efforts more explicitly on developing biodiversity conservation leaders.

While many of the details are not yet agreed for taking the programme forward (we have some new ideas that we'll let you know about as they evolve), we didn't want to jeopardise the opportunity to offer awards in 2006. As such, we are using 2006 as a transition year – an opportunity to test some new approaches and procedures, whilst also trying to ensure continuity with the previous programme.

Three different awards will be offered in 2006: 1.) Future Conservationist Awards – approximately 20 awards of up to $12,500 each, 2.) Conservation Follow-up Awards – approximately 5 awards of up to $25,000, and 3.) Conservation Leadership Awards – 2 awards of up to $50,000. The three tiers allow progression from encouraging and supporting inexperienced teams undertaking small-scale, basic surveying and awareness-raising projects, to the stage where teams are engaging in more complex decision-making, and developing stronger communication and leadership skills.

The application deadline is 16th December 2005 for ALL awards, and awards will be announced mid-March 2006. All details, including new guidelines and application forms, are now available on our website! Please visit our website for all the details.

Marianne Dunn, BP Conservation Programme Manager

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30 Sept – 6 Oct World Wilderness Congress, Anchorage, Alaska

15 Oct 2005 SCB Deadline for Submission of Workshop and Symposia Abstracts

23 – 27 October 2005 The first International Marine Protected Areas Congress, Geelong, Australia

19 – 20 November 2005 Royal Geographical Society with RGB's Explorer Conference for budding expeditioners, London, UK

16 Dec 2005 BPCP Application Deadline

20 – 31 March 2006 Convention on Biological Diversity COP 8, Curitiba, Brazil

24 – 28 June 2006 SCB Annual Meeting, San Jose, CA

13 - 19 August 2006 International Ornithological Congress, Hamburg, Germany.

15th Anniversary Celebration at the 2005 SCB Meeting, Brasilia, Brazil
The entire BP Conservation Programme team ventured out of the office this July and made the journey to Brasilia, Brazil to attend the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) Annual Meeting. Prior to the meeting, we were able to visit the Chapada do Araripe in the state of Ceará. We were very grateful to be well looked after by the Araripe Manakin team, who won an award in 2004 to conserve the critically endangered Araripe Manakin – a bird species that was only described as new to science in 1998. Read More...

News From the Field

Africa

Conservation of African Wild Dogs, Mozambique (Gold Award 2005)
The entire Quirimbas National Park (QNP) and its periphery in the Cabo Delgado province of Mozambique have now been surveyed to look for signs of wild dog presence and to conduct herbivore/carnivore counts. At the conclusion of the fieldwork, the species and its ecology were fully described by the team undertaking this project. Read more...

Rainforest Reserves for Critically Endangered Comorian Fruit Bats, Comoros Islands (Gold Award 2005)
The Comoros Fruit Bat Reserve Project has initiated efforts for conservation of the critically endangered Livingstone’s flying fox and its rainforest habitat. The aim is to use a collaborative approach to develop specific plans for reserves that will be sustainable and beneficial to bat and forest conservation, and have broad local and governmental support. Read more...

Present Distribution and Condition of Manatee in the Cuanza River, Angola (Silver Award 2005)
Project implementation started in May, with the main purpose to capture data from different seasons to determine water fluctuation of the Cuanza River and lakes and to determine whether or not these fluctuations influence manatee populations. Read more...

The Tulbagh Renosterveld Project, South Africa (Silver Award 2005)
Thus far the team has managed to sample five sites, one of which is the biggest remnant patch of Renosterveld left in the Tulbagh Valley. The site is in extremely good condition and they found a new population of Xiphotheca lanceolata, an endangered plant from the Fabaceae family. Read more...

Conservation Comoros 2005, Comoros Islands (Bronze Award 2005)
The Conservation Comoros project is drawing to a close on Anjouan. Work culminated recently with a training and discussion day for village environment groups in the capital Mutsumudu. Read more...

Mpingo Conservation Project, Tanzania (Consolidation Award 2004)
The Mpingo Conservation Project has completed the design and production work on a village education packet, and has begun distribution to local villages. Read more...

Status of Two Threatened Species in Two IBAs, Rwanda (Silver Award 2004)
With BP support, a student team has been collecting data to assess the status of two endangered warblers in two Rwandan Important Bird Areas. Read more...

Conservation Action, Training and Research in the Androy Region, Madagascar (Consolidation Award 2003)
Over the past two years, the Tandroy Conservation Trust (TCT) and their local partner, the Libanona Ecology Centre (LEC), have implemented an ambitious set of projects with the support of the BP Conservation Programme Consolidation Award. Read more...

Asia / Pacific

CROC Project, Philippines (Consolidation Award 2005)
We’ve got it! The CROC project won the BP Conservation Program Consolidation Award 2005. The Philippine Inquirer, the nation’s leading newspaper, put the BP Conservation Program Awards on the front page: “Philippine conservationists win green Oscar.” It reads a bit as follows: the President is being impeached, the economy is collapsing… but at least we have the CROC project! Read more...

Extending Chelonian Research, Education and Conservation, Cambodia (Follow-up Award 2005)
The Cambodian Turtle Conservation Project (CTCP) received a Follow-up award this year in order to expand their conservation work on endangered turtles and tortoises in Southwest Cambodia. The project is conducted by a group of students from the Royal University of Phnom Penh with cooperation with Conservation International Cambodia and the Forestry Administration. Read more...

Development of Conservation Measures for Darevsky's viper in the Caucasus, Armenia (Gold Award 2005)
During the most recent field campaign, the team returned home with two pregnant female vipers. The vipers recently gave birth in a terrarium, where conditions were as close to natural as they could get them. Read more...

Conservation of Tricholoma matsutake mushroom in Northwest Yunnan, China (Silver Award 2005)
Project Matsutake got off to a great start with the commencement of the field season in June. Directly following the grand opening of key partner, Shangri-la Alpine Botanical Garden, the group began selecting sites and sampling. Read more...

Project Knuckles, Sri Lanka (Silver Award 2005)
After a busy field season, the Project Knuckles team has successfully achieved many of their objectives. The team was able to physically verify and document 69 reptile species inhabiting the Knuckles range. Read more...

Action- Tayam Peh: Ecology and Conservation of the Nicobar Flying Fox, Nicobar Islands, India (Follow-up Award 2004)
The Nicobar flying fox is an endemic species with a restricted range distribution in the Central Nicobar Islands. This endemic species of bat is severely threatened by habitat loss due to forest clearing and hunting pressure. Read more...

Behavioural Ecology and Conservation of Rhinopithecus avunculus, Vietnam (Gold Award 2004)
In August the research team made their first trip to a new study site located in the buffer zone of the Du Gia Nature Reserve, Ha Giang province. Read more...

Monitoring and Conservation of Globally Threatened Species, Azerbaijan (Gold Award 2004)
A high number of important sites for biodiversity, in particular for birds, are found within Azerbaijan, and as a result, the country forms part of the Caucasian Endemic Bird Area. Despite the high importance of this area, there is a major lack of conservation practitioners, which is in turn creating a lack of data and current knowledge on the status of endemic species in the country. Read more...

Status Survey for Orange-necked Partridge in Binh Phuoc, Vietnam (Gold Award 2004)
During April and May 2005, the Orange-necked partridge project was successfully carried out by six core team members from Hanoi Birbwatching Club, Hanoi National University, Binh Phuoc provincial Forest Protection Department, Bu Gia Map National Park and two local team members selected from each survey site. Read more...

Conservation of Gangetic Dolphin, India (Bronze Award 2004)
After detailed scanning of the main tributaries of Brahmaputra Valley and in the main Brahmaputra River over the past year, the team confirmed that the main Brahmaputra River, from the Assam-Arunachal border to the India/Bangladesh border and three other tributaries of the river have dolphin populations. Read more...

Katala Quest, Philippines (Silver Award 2003)
For the first time, the Katala Quest project conducted vertebrate inventories in the extreme lowlands of the Pagdanan Range, northern Palawan. Most of the red-listed species within the hotspot were recorded, some for the first time in many years. Read more...

Europe

Bat Census in Crimean Caves, Ukraine (Bronze Award 2004)
The first full-scale census of cave-dwelling bat species has been completed by the Crimean bat team, and the first precise estimation of the current state of cave-roosting bats and a list of key bat sites of the region is now possible. Read more...

Survey of Endangered Fish Species of the Morača River System, Yugoslavia (Bronze Award 2002)
After much research, data collection and analysis, the team surveying endangered fish species in the Morača River system have come to the conclusion that species richness of freshwater fishes in the Morača River was previously underestimated. Read more...

Latin America / Caribbean

Saving the Blue Billed Curassow, Colombia (Follow-up Award 2005)
After successfully completing their initial conservation project on the blue billed curassow (Crax alberti) in the Magdalena Province of Colombia, the project received a 2005 Follow-up Award. Three new investigations with the species are currently advancing, focusing on reproductive biology, diet, density and behavior. Read more...

Project Pawi: Recovery of the Trinidad Piping-Guan, Trinidad (Gold Award 2005)
The Project Pawi team successfully completed their first phase of work in May, laying the ground work by collecting information, establishing a network of contacts and collaborators and beginning to investigate survey methodologies. Read more...

YARÉ: Yariguíes Assessment and Research of Endangered species, Colombia (Silver Award 2005)
The YARE team recently completed the first stage of their project. They visited three unique and unexplored primary forest sites of the Yariguíes mountain range in the high Colombian Andes. Read more...

Assessment of Seabird Bycatch in Artisanal Fisheries, Peru (Bronze Award 2005)
Eight trips to sea have been conducted by the team in order to gather information on seabird bycatch as on-board observers on longline and gillnet vessels departing from the ports of Ilo and Salaverry on the southern and central coast, which are areas that have high seabird-fishery interactions. Read more...

Threatened Birds of Bolivia (Consolidation Award 2004)
As a result the project's efforts, the Southern Horned Curassow has been uplisted to globally Endangered according to the IUCN Redlist for 2005 as reported by BirdLife International. Read more...

Conservation of Melocactus actinacanthus, Cuba (Bronze Award 2004)
Prior to July, only three Critically Endangered M. actinacanthus cactus plants were known. But during an undergraduate training course, two mature and 18 young plants were discovered by the team. Read more...

Ensuring Effective Conservation for Endangered Grassland Birds, Uruguay (Bronze Award 2004)
During the winter months, grassland birds (Sporophila sp.) aren’t found in Uruguay. Therefore, the team has used this time for educational activities, training team members in monitoring techniques and creating posters. Read more...

Project Hapalopsittaca, Colombia (Consolidation Award 2003)
Based on data collected from 12 natural nests and 21 artificial nests, the team has determined that the reproductive season of Hapalopsittaca fuertesi is between the months of January and May. Read more...

Integrated Approach Toward Giant Otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) Conservation, Bolivia (Follow-up Award 2003)
The team published a giant otter triptych for distribution amongst interested community members, and they are considering creating an English version in order to spread the word and garner more international support. Read more...

Soul of the Andes, Argentina (Follow-up Award 2003)
The Andean Cat team recently joined forces with Oxford University and partners of the Andean Cat Alliance to undertake an innovative, cross-border initiative aiming to study and protect the Andean cat around the triple frontier of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Read more...

Programme Alumni: Where are they now?

A conversation with John Pilgrim, Project Kasigau 1998
As students and conservation professionals dashed about at the 2005 Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting, the BP Conservation Programme caught up with past winner John Pilgrim. With the excitement of conservationists sharing their findings buzzing in the background, John’s thoughtful insight into his experience as a BPCP alumnus was a bit counterintuitive. A member of Project Kasigau, which took place in Kenya in 1998, John was part of a team that set out to conduct a rapid assessment of Mt. Kasigau, where fieldwork had not taken place, at least in ornithology, since 1938. More specifically, they were hoping to establish the status of three globally threatened bird species, but their findings did not exactly deliver what they expected. Read More...

Final Reports Received

These recently concluded projects have had some exciting results. For a copy of the full report, send an email request to bp-conservation-programme@birdlife.org.uk or telephone +44 (0) 1223.277.318.

Project Websites

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