African practitioners enhance their biodiversity monitoring skills

Practitioners from the eight countries implementing the africa IBA monitoring project met at the Kenya Wildlife Training Institute in Naivasha from the 22^nd to the 24^th of November 2007. The event was a training of trainers workshop in monitoring. Participants hailed the event as ‘informative and well organized’. It brought together a team with a diverse skills and experiences from within, and outside, the continent of Africa. Representatives from the Wetland International, Birdlife International staff in the United Kingdom were amongst the delegates.

This workshop was held under the auspices of a regional initiative funded by the european commission on ‘instituting effective monitoring of Protected Areas/Important Bird Areas to reduce biodiversity loss in Africa’ managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and coordinated by the Birdlife International secretariat in Nairobi. The project seeks to meet the CBD 2010 target of reducing biodiversity loss by monitoring the status and trends of Protected Areas/Important Bird Areas and this workshop was one of ways to build capacity amongst the practitioners from eight countries in the north, east, south and west of Africa to use effective but cheap and robust methods of monitoring biodiversity.

The results of this training is that it promoted a common understanding of the underlying concepts of the iba monitoring framework in order to enhance its practical application at site level, familiarized participants with the world bird database IBA monitoring module and related software tools that are available, assessed IBA monitoring experience so far and lessons learned, particularly from the pilot project in Kenya monitoring reports and exposed participants to the practical aspects of monitoring the sharps longclaw through a field exercise in Murungaru Nature Reserve led by the friends of Kinangop Committee members.

“Practitioners from seasoned conservation organizations in non-governmental and government institutions such as Nature Kenya, Uganda Wildlife Authority, Kenya Wildlife Service and Birdlife International shared their rich experiences of monitoring biodiversity and this proved stimulating and interesting to the participants” —Thandiwe Chikomo, Birdlife International Secretariat, Nairobi

The workshop sort answers to questions such as follows: what is the goal of the monitoring to be undertaken?; what are the indicators and methods to achieve the goals; how are the data to be analysed and how will the results and interpretations communicated to managers, decision makers and the public? The monitoring applied in these countries will feed to the knowledge base and definition of management decisions emanating from the combined efforts of local based stakeholders, scientists and decision makers. The workshop also provided ‘an exchange of ideas among seasoned GNO and government practitioners about how monitoring is conducted for the conservation of biodiversity and this should be emulated’- Aggrey Rwetsiba of the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

The recipients of the training ‘benefited tremendously from the in-depth sharing and exchange of knowledge and will be able to impart the skills to wider target groups in their constituencies’ Motshreganyi Virat Kootsosiste of Birdlife Botswana.

“these efforts will be complimented by tailor made training modules at national level that will be designed using a regional standard developed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ – Dr Julius Arinaitwe Birdlife International Secretariat, Nairobi.