An international workshop took place in Bonn (23-26 June 1999), together with several other activities celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Bonn Convention. The workshop opened new perspectives for monitoring migratory animals and brought together conservationists and scientists from different fields (satellite tracking, genetics, computer biology). It was organized by GROMS (Global Register of Migratory Species), which is an R&D-project funded by the German Ministry of Environment and housed at the Centre for Development Research and the Zoological Research Institute and Museum Alexander König.

The workshop presented in lectures and small working groups the development of new research technologies such as satellite tracking and genetic analysis which improve our knowledge about animal migrations considerably. Databases and geographical information systems (GIS) allow effective information management and retrieval via the World Wilde Web. However, the coherent organisation of data needed by conservationists is still in its infancy, due to the heterogeneous nature of data sets and theoretical challenges to GIS such as common standards and coding of the time domain.