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.

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.

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.

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 applciation as an elephant deterrent" as the winner. The prize will be awarded at the CMS COP in Norway in November.

For information in English click here and for the annoucement of the winner, click here.

Pour plus d'informations en français, cliquez ici

Más informacion en español, haga click aquí