Thanks to a successful bid into the EU Horizon programme, ESUG will coordinate a project for PROactive approach for COmmunities to enAble Societal Transformation. Starting on 1 November 2023 and running for 3 years,  PRO-COAST will research motivations for nature conservation based mainly in sustainable use of cultural (e.g. ecotourism) and productive (e.g. fisheries) services from wild species and their ecosystems, initially in nine coastal communities in Europe and then scale up for roll out (e.g on Naturalliance, see last two paras here). For PRO-COAST we now also have a Gender Equality Policy for which Dr Tetiana Gardashuk is Gender Equality Officer.

After being unable to meet during the Covid-19 pandemic, ESUG at last brought its members together, by Teams and physically, in Brussels during 0900-1315 CEST on Wednesday 31 May 2023, in new FACE headquarters (conveniently opposite DG Environment). The meeting was preceded on May 30 by the closing event of two GWCT-led projects, PARTRIDGE & BEESPOKE, on how sustainable use can restore biodiversity by working with communities of interest and local communities (a video of the event is well worth watching) and by a Biodiversity WG meeting of International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey.

Papers for the ESUG General Meeting were as follows:

The Meeting Agenda

The Meeting on Screen

Minutes of the Meeting in Croatia on 24 April 2019

Report of the Chair

Report from Ukraine

Financial Report

Candidates for Chair and Committee

Draft minutes from the meeting will be uploaded here soon.

Seven ESUG members attended a 3-day conference in Abu Dhabi on "The Significance of Indigenous People and Local Communities in linking Intangible Cultural Heritage and Wildlife Conservation". This event marked the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between IUCN and the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey (IAF) on raptor conservation and stakeholder networking. Adrian Lombard, Elizabeth Leix, Alessandra Oliveto, Janusz Sielicki, Julian Mühle, Robert Kenward and Véronique Blontrock were all speakers and joined many young falconers for a training workshop on running our networks. Janusz launched IAF's new conservation network and presentations from the conference are available for access here.

Members of SULi and SUME (here Gabriela Lichtenstein & Julian Mühle) worked with Team-IUCN at Plenary 9 of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Bonn during 3-9 July 2022. A main task of Plenary 9 was to approve the IPBES Assessment of Sustainable Use of Biodiversity, which was started in 2017 and exceeds 1100 pages. An advance version of the 30-page Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) is available online already with a press release from IPBES. The STM is now also covered in a two-page review for SULi and SUME members; comments on the two-pager are welcome, to help prepare for adding much material to our Naturalliance network when IPBES publishes the full six-chapter assessment.

Not content with encouraging farmers to work together in ‘Farmer Clusters’ of about 10 farms, for which UK government’s Natural England provided a facilitation fund, the Game and Wildlife Trust has now managed the launch of a much larger grouping at river catchment scale. Expected to cover over 40,000 hectares – or around one third the area of all England’s National Nature Reserves - the Environmental Farmers Group (EFG) is the first of its kind in the UK, with 80 farmers united to deliver biodiversity recovery, clean water in the River Avon, and net zero farming by 2040. The river Avon is the largest chalk-water system in England, and stunningly productive of salmonid species if the conditions are right. The Farm Clusters now linking for the Environmental Farmers Group have already increased populations of wading birds and other farmland species. Cooperations of stakeholders like this are probably the best way to sustain rural ecosystem services.