The workshop from 30 March - 1 April 2009 to revise the AEWA Sociable Lapwing Single Species Action Plan was also the closing event for the 3-year research project led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and funded by the UK’s Darwin Initiative.

Governmental and NGO representatives of five of the seven range states - Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey, Sudan and India - attended.

Introductory presentations were followed by several sessions of threat analysis and objective setting. On the last day participants worked out the activities of the action plan from their national perspectives. The current action plan is under the auspices of AEWA, but the new plan will also extend eastwards to cover the eastern path of birds wintering in India.

The workshop concluded with a presentation of the two-year follow up project, again funded by the Darwin Initiative, to identify the key stopover and wintering sites of the species. The outputs from the workshop will be used to draft a revised AEWA/CMS Sociable Lapwing Action Plan.

The workshop was conceived by the RSPB, BirdLife in Kazakhstan and the AEWA Secretariat. Sponsors of the event were Swarovski Optics, which donated scopes and binoculars, the Darwin Initiative and an anonymous donor.