January 2016: Cambodia National Vulture Workshop

BirdLife International Cambodia Programme started 2016 by hosting a National Workshop (15th Jan) on vulture conservation, with delegates from Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Environment, local civil society including Universities and local NGOs and International conservation organisations and experts, including Chris Bowden from SAVE, Wildlife Conservation Society Cambodia, World Wildlife Fund, Angkor Centre for Conservation of Biodiversity and a delegation from IUCN and Govt. of Bangladesh.

All agreed the most important threat to vultures in Cambodia is the indiscriminate use of widely available poisons such as pesticides and developed approaches to tackle this issue. An important next step for vulture conservation is a national campaign to reduce the use of pesticides and other poisons harmful to both people and wildlife! The outputs from the meeting are being used to develop a Cambodia National Vulture Recovery Plan and to update the Cambodia Vulture Activities in the next Blueprint document (more and BirdLife Cambodia FB photos here).