The United Kingdom has provided CMS with 30,000 GBP (ca. USD 56,000) to support special activities to raise awareness on the threats to migratory species while providing the opportunity for countries to address the threats through their biodiversity strategies and action plans (BSAPs). The UK Global Wildlife Division of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the CMS Secretariat signed an agreement in Bonn on 25 February 2004. Arnulf Müller-Helmbrecht, CMS Executive Secretary, and Hilary Neal, Head of Zoos and international Species Conservation Branch at the Global Wildlife Division, UK DEFRA, and Chair of the CMS Standing Committee expressed their confidence that the Agreement will provide a strong conceptual basis for CMS to address the ever-increasing threats to migratory species.

The Secretariat will receive 10,000 GBP for a workshop on migratory species and global change during the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Bangkok in November 2004. Migratory species are subject to different threats and highly dependent on the quality of their habitats across their migratory range. Conservation activities need to be co-ordinated across a migratory range to ensure their effectiveness. The workshop – Conserving Migratory Species in a Changing World - will review the relationship between migratory species, their conservation and the risks presented by global factors such as climate change, habitat loss and invasive species. The workshop will provide a basis for CMS to evaluate its effectiveness in the face of global change, a set of challenges that in some cases did not exist when the Convention was adopted 25 years ago in 1979.

Biodiversity strategies and action plans – required under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)– are a central tool in every country’s approach to addressing the threats to biodiversity, including migratory species. To date there has been no analysis on the extent to which migratory species have been included in BSAPs. DEFRA will support CMS with a 20,000 GBP grant to review the state of the art and develop guidelines to integrate migratory species considerations into BSAPs. The DEFRA grant will make it possible for the CBD and CMS Secretariats to collaborate to fulfil the requests of their respective Conferences of Parties to address the issue and capture synergies between the two conventions.