The
UNEP/CMS Thesis Award on Migratory Species Conservation
was launched by the Secretariat of the Bonn Convention
on Migratory Species, on the occasion of its 25th Anniversary
in 2004. The award is sponsored by Lufthansa (previously
co-sponsored by National Geographic Deutschland) and a
prize of €10,000 is offered every three years at
the Conference of Parties to CMS. The award was bestowed
for the first time at the 8th meeting of the CMS Conference
of the Parties (COP8) in November 2005, in association
with Museum Alexander Koenig and the Global Register of
Migratory Species. The Secretariat of the Bonn Convention
on Migratory Species advertises this award to promote
scientific research and conservation of migratory species,
as defined by the Convention.
The winner should be willing to make his/her original
data widely accessible through the CMS Information System
and the GROMS database (except sensitive data). The Secretariat
and the Museum Koenig will eventually provide support
to generate appropriate data repositories and related
metadata, as well as online and/or hardcopy publication
of the winner’s thesis.
Thesis Award 2005
The first winner of the UNEP/CMS Thesis Award, chosen
by the jury in July 2005, was Dr Zeb Hogan, a scientist
from the United States. Dr.Carlos Rodriguez from Spain
and Dr Rodrigo Hucke-Gaete from Chile were nominated second
and third laureates. Dr Hogan was later appointed by the
Conference of the Parties to the CMS Scientific Council
as the expert on fish species
(see the report of the 2005 award).
Thesis Award 2008
The second winner was Dr Samantha Petersen of South Africa
for her work entitled ‘Understanding and Mitigating
Vulnerable Bycatch in southern African Trawl and Longline
Fisheries’. By-catch is a major concern to CMS as
it affects a number of migratory species including albatrosses
and petrels, marine turtles, sharks and cetaceans. The
second and third places were taken by Dr Lin Xia with
her thesis on ‘Traffic Disturbance to the Migration
of Tibetan Antelopes (Pantholops hodgsoni) in
Hoh-xil National Nature Reserve’ and Dr Ross Wanless
with research on ‘Impacts of the introduced house
mouse on the seabirds of Gough Island’.
For the second competition in 2008, 32 candidates from
18 countries submitted abstracts of their theses on subjects
covering all continents. The main criteria for the jury
of experts in selecting a winner were the importance of
the species for the Bonn Convention as well as new data
and insights into the biology of migratory species that
can help to better conserve them during their migration
(see the report of the 2008 award).
Thesis Award 2011
The third competition was launched on July 2010 with
the closing date for applications set at 15 April 2011.
Sixty-one entries were received from twenty-five different
countries. The jury met on 20th September and chose Dr
Lucy King's thesis on "the interaction between the
African elephant and the African honey bee and its potential
application as an elephant deterrent" as the winner.
The prize was awarded at the CMS COP in Norway in November.
The report of the Third Thesis Award can be found here.
For information in English click
here and for the annoucement of the winner,
click
here.
Pour plus d'informations en français, cliquez
ici
Más información en español, haga
click
aquí
