The Mongolian parliament has passed a national law implementing the CMS Guidelines on mitigating the impact of linear infrastructure and related disturbance on mammals in Central Asia just six months after they were adopted at COP11.

CMS welcomes the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as the 121st Party to the Convention with effect from 1 August 2015.

The Secretariat of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (UNEP/CMS) is pleased to inform you that the German Federal Foreign Ministry has confirmed receipt of the

Around 40 percent of the critically endangered Saiga antelope have died in Kazakhstan in the last couple of months.

Bonn, 16 June 2015 –Today marks the 20^th anniversary of theAgreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA).

More than 120,000 saiga antelope have been confirmed dead in central Kazakhstan, representing more than a third of the global population. This is a major blow for conservation efforts given that saigas have in the past ten years only just started to recover from a global population size of less than 50,000 animals following a 95% crash in numbers.

In response to a request from Kazakhstan, the CMS Secretariat is sending out an expert mission today to strengthen work to identify the cause of the current saiga die-off.

About 10,000 saigas have been found dead in Amangeldy district of the Kostanay region in Central Kazakhstan.