The Pan-African Ornithological Congress, at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, scheduled for November 2020 has been postponed for two years until November 2022 because of Covid19.
The IOC 2022 will be in Durban, South Africa in August 2022. The MLSG will also be involved in organising symposia and early career researcher workshops. Details of this will be developed over the next year and particularly in light of the outcomes and needs identified during the PAOC 2021 meeting.
The 13th European Ornithologists’ Union Congress is going to take place in Giessen (Germany), March 14-18 2022. The Migrant Landbird Study Group is hosting a pre-congress symposium - we are looking forward to see you!
Following up on the successful MLSG symposia at EOU2015 in Badajoz, PAOC2016 in Dakar & EOU2017 in Turku, we are ready for another dose of inspiring community-building preceding EOU2019 in Cluj-Napoca on August 24th-25th. The aim of the MLSG is to promote collaborative research to help advance flyway-scale understanding of and conservation actions for migrant landbirds, especially along the African-Eurasian Flyways. We believe knowledge-sharing is essential to achieve this. Thus, during our symposium we will actively engage all attendants to partake in a dynamic program of presentations, workshops and group discussions.
13 - 16 December, Gdansk, Poland
Across the globe migrant birds are confronted by and adapt to climate change and effects of human development during various stages of their life cycles. Afro-Palearctic migrants can serve as indicators of the effects of climate change across Europe and in Africa. While migrant birds know no borders, their continued existence depends on international collaboration of scientists and conservationists. Therefore, we gather in Gdansk as bird researchers from Europe and Africa, to share knowledge, discuss our concerns and explore potential solutions. We aim to generate a better understanding of issues relating to the conservation of migrant birds, as well as to set up collaborative projects on migrant landbird research.
Following up on the successful MLSG symposia at EOU2015 in Badajoz and PAOC2016 in Dakar, we are ready for another dose of inspiring community-building preceding EOU2017 in Turku from August 17th-18th.
The MLSG hopes to have a presence at the 14th Pan African Ornithological Congress to be held in Dakar, Senegal 17-21st October, 2016.
An invitation to submit proposals for symposia has been circulated. Symposia provide the organisational structure for the PAOC and highlight topical and important themes within the overarching theme of African Ornithology. They should provide fora for a wide representation of ornithologists to discuss and synthesize the latest developments in the field.
Over 90 people attended the MLSG satellite symposium on the day before the start of the full EOU conference. The meeting started with Danae Sheehan, the Chair of the MLSG welcoming everyone and outlining the rationale behind the meeting and the MLSG. As it says on the strap-line: the meeting was to connect research and conservation workers across the flyway.
From 26-28 March 2014 in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, ~35 people from different countries, institutes and different backgrounds (research, conservation, policy) came together to discuss the current status of research on migrating landbirds within the Eurasia-African flyway. The initiative to create the Migrant Landbird Study Group (MLSG) first was brought up following the action plan proposed for the AEMLAP project under the umbrella of the Convention on Migratory Species.
The Migrant Landbird Study Group concept was initiated at a round table discussion at the 9th Conference of the European Ornithologists' Union (EOU) in Norwich, United Kingdom in August 2013.
This open discussion was attended by 50 people and chaired by EOU president Thomas Wesołowski. Danaë Sheenan (RSPB – BirdLife in the UK) and Bernd de Bruijn (VBN – BirdLife in The Netherlands) provided a brief background of the African-Eurasian Migratory Landbirds Action Plan (AEMLAP) and the resulting increasing importance of related research, as well as a letter from Prof. Franz Bairlein offering to host a first meeting of the MLSG.