Very many congratulations to our member in Kazakhstan and Honourable Professor of Kostanai Pedagogical Institute, Doctor of Biological Sciences Tatyana M. Bragina, for whom an International Conference was dedicated on “Conservation of Biological Diversity and Development of a Network of Specially Protected Natural Areas”. Tatyana (centre with pink/white flowers) was instrumental in creating the Naurzum Nature Reserve and is a long-standing member of IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management. Robert Kenward attended by Zoom and gave introductory words as well as providing a first publication for the Pro-Coast project. Many thanks to Tetiana Gardashuk for help with translation.

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.

The Intergroup of the European Parliament on Biodiversity, Hunting, Countryside held an event in Brussels on “Is Africa’s Voice being Heard? Hunting, Conservation and Livelihoods”. Under the chairing of IUCN Councillor Ali Kaka, from Kenya, The Hon Pohamba Shifeta, Minister of Environment, Forestry and Tourism in Namibia, was joined at the podium by Ambassadors to the EU from Botswana and Zambia, and on video by Dr Rogers Lubilo of the Community Leaders Network of Southern Africa. A recording shows that Africa’s voice badly needs to be heard. Dr Dilys Roe, chair of SULi, added many good points on the importance of hunting for communities and conservation, in a concluding panel discussion with Jorge Rodriguez Romero of European Commission and Ivonne Higuero of CITES.

The 35^th Congress of the International Union of Game Biologists has opened in Budapest, combined with a number of other key events within the framework of the One With Nature World Exhibition. Of special interest to ESUG members, some of whom may remember our meeting in Hungary in 1999, is the 15^th Perdix Congress and a two day forum of the Collaborative Partnership for Wildlife Management. The latter will take place from mid-day on 26 September through 27 September, with strong participation by SULi and registration for online participation here.

The long-awaited WCC7 took place during 3-11 September 2021. Among 9 200 participants at Marseille and online, 4 730 individuals connected by internet for more than 19 000 hours of viewing. Media coverage was impressive, with 140 countries publishing some 10 000 articles and 54 million people accessing via #IUCNcongress. Click here for more information. The process of reconstituting the membership of IUCN’s Commissions can now start, including a new Commission for Climate Change.

Professor Basil Manos, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics (IJSAMI), passed away on July 5, 2021 at the age of 70, in his hometown of Thessaloniki, Greece. His battle with serious medical issues in recent months showed his courage and strength in facing life. Despite the challenges, Basil came out a hero and stayed strong until the end.

Basil earned his bachelor degrees from the Department of Mathematics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1973 and from the Department of Economics of the University of Macedonia in 1979. He had a master degree in Operations Research from the London School of Economics in 1981 and from 1976 till 2018 he served as a Professor in the School of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

His research interests were in farm management and regional planning, environmental management, impact assessment, sustainability, efficiency and business informatics. He was head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Director of the Lab of Agricultural Economics Research. He conducted research in many national and European funded projects and he initiated IJSAMI, guiding it steadily to success. As an ESUG member, he was firm, kind and often amusing in his leadership of the projects on Governance and Ecosystem Management for Conservation of Biodiversity and to design a Transactional Environmental Support System.

He was a beloved husband, father of two girls and grandfather of two. He was an honourable man that served with distinction in all positions he occupied. He made his family and his friends proud. He will be greatly missed.

On 18 June 2021, ESUG members held a presentation “Need Restoration be Multilingual” for IUCN-CEMs Ecosystem Restoration Thematic Group (ERTG), which organises a monthly webinar series on “Ecosystem Restoration: Global Initiatives in Science and Practice". The webinar was very well received by over 110 participants from a plethora of groups, institutions and organisations and highlighted insights from Prof. Kenward’s lifelong work promoting sustainable use solutions via international conventions, scientific papers and multilingual Glocal (Global with Local) networks. An abstract may be found here, together with a copy of the talk itself, and a recording of the presentation may be accessed here. 

As we are now in the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, IUCN's ERTG is hosting further webinars on the third Friday of each month. Those who are interested in this informative series of presentations may register via this link. 

Prof Dr Evgeny Bragin was a superb field-scientist from the start of his career. Working at Naurzum reserve in northern Kazakhstan, he studied raptors nesting in the sparse stands of trees that fringed the open steppe to the south, using motorbikes with side-cars for colleagues and stability. He was always courteous, gentle to offer practical advice, pragmatic in terms of support for sustainable-use as a conservation technique and reliable as a friend and scientist. It is therefore no surprise that he became a pillar of the academic establishment in Kazakhstan. Colleagues have prepared a more detailed obituary in Russian on Facebook and in translation as a download. Complications from a Covid-19 infection took him from us on 25 August 2020, leaving his wife Prof Dr Tatyana Bragina to help us remember him.

"The United Nations is 75. Everyone is invited to a United Nations survey. Please tell your social media contacts about this today."

Thanks to ESUG translators, the news was available in 4 days at links on our Naturalliance network in the following languages: 

Chinese --- English --- Estonian --- Farsi --- French --- Hausa --- Italian --- Japanese --- Portuguese --- Romanian --- Russian --- Spanish

The message came to us from secretariat of UN's Convention on Conservation of Migratory Species, with which we've been working since 2012, including for www.sakernet.org, and was forwarded also for circulation to IUCN-SUME and IUCN-SULi.

A lot of ‘wildlife crime’ occurs because local traditions are rendered illegal by decisions made in English at international conventions without the awareness, let alone with consultation in their own language, of those affected. Such crime can be addressed by giving more scope for local people to act legally and explaining in local languages why that is important. Recommendations to that effect were one outcome of a workshop organised on 27 August in Abu Dhabi by the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey, the Convention on Conservation of Migratory Species and the Bern Convention. After a talk by members of ESUG, SUME & SULi, our network to promote legal use of Saker Falcons was re-launched in 10 languages by an Emirati diplomat, HE Awadh Ali Sali, by pressing the button to publish www.sakernet.org.

Dr Riccardo Simoncini, coordinator of ESUG's Agriculture Working Group, joined colleagues to prepare Chapter 6 on "Options for Governance and Decision Making across Scales and Sectors" in the IPBES Report for Europe and Central Asia. He then turned this into a paper on constraints and opportunities for biodiversity and ecosystem services under the Common Agricultural Policy,  published in Land Use Policy. This key review is now joined by a review of insights from the IPBES work to inform the CBD

post-2020 agenda in Ecosystems and People.

Our 2019 General Meeting was in Karlovac, Croatia, as part of a conference with together with IUCN's group on Sustainable Use and Management of Ecosystems during 23-25 April 2019. Many thanks to Dr Viktor Šegrt for the planning and Dr Margarita Maruškić Kulaš for facilities at Aquatika. Please visit our Meetings Page for all the details.

Thanks to the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, a pioneering landscape ecologist, the first International Falconry Festival was in Abu Dhabi in 1976. Falconer-biologists gathered when falconry was struggling to show its conservation benefits and survive ignorant attacks. When veterans of that meeting re-gathered in 2017, they celebrated falconry's inscription by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage and the re-legalisation of falconry after 50 year's absence in Denmark. Further details of ESUG and SUME activities in 2017 are in an annual report.

SUME's 4th meeting was kindly hosted during 26-27 October 2017 by the 

Instituto de Ciencias de la Naturaleza, Territorio y Energía Renovables at the

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Download proceedings of the meeting to read the abstracts, linked to Powerpoint presentations and other useful information.

SUME’s third meeting since its creation in 2014 was in the small town of Cholpon Ata, on the shores of Lake Issyk Kul in Central Asia. The meeting was kindly hosted on 7 September 2017 by the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey (IAF). Download the report.

ESUG met at 13.00 on 11/05/2017, followed by a reception to launch Perdixnet at the Bozar in Brussels. The draft Minutes of the General Meeting, which has links to all the meeting papers, and details of the logistics are available for download.

The European Federation of Associations for Hunting and Conservation (FACE) has launched a manifesto which can be downloaded in English French and German, with links to reports in those languages of 221 conservation projects across Europe which involve hunters. A website featuring the projects is on the way and will be an important new link on best conservation practice in our naturalliance portal.

The first Nature Action (see left Menu), which was agreed for Wild Game and Pollinators at ESUG's 2015 General Meeting, has gone live on trial in the Irish Republic. This follows explanatory talks to the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey, on the portals which ESUG and GWCT have developed for them, on conservation through sustainable use for falconry, and on the new portal for which the Grey Partridge is a flagship. Translated by IAF into Croatian, French, German, Polish and Russian, with Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Spanish and Ukrainian on the way from ESUG, Perdixnet aims to restore wildlife-friendly farming from Atlantic to Adriatic.

An Intergroup Meeting in the European Parliament followed the policy recommendations of ESUG's GEMCONBIO-UNWIRE and TESS projects in calling for proper recording of value from Hunting, Recreational Fishing, Gathering and Watching wildlife, in order to inform policy on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Visit the SULi blog on Facebook

The portal for conserving Saker Falcons through use in Asia, a cooperation between CMS Raptors MOU, International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey (IAF), BirdLife International and IUCN, is re-launched for a new survey after inclusion of first year results in Arabic, Farsi, Pushto and Russian. A new portal with IAF, on conserving small-game and ecosystems on which it depends, is ready for translation.

SULi and SUME members from Argentina, Mexico and the UK were at a meeting in Bonn during 2-4 August to redraft a scoping document for the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. We placed special emphasis on recognition of the positives for conservation from sustainable use of wild species.

Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group launched on Facebook today, with links to much good material. 

Go visit and leave a Like!

European Environment Agency is calling for applications by experts in socio-technical systems (2 appointments), socio-ecological systems (1), sustainability (2) and data (1), for 3 meetings annually during 4 years. The deadline for applying is 10 June 2016.

On Wednesday 20 April a parliamentary intergroup run by Despina Symons hosted a meeting on "Poachers or Protectors? Local communities at the frontline of conservation". SULi chair Dr Rosie Cooney spoke at the meeting, for which an important Briefing on Trophy Hunting was released, followed by significant information from the European Parliament.

The Aurora lit the sky above the CMS Raptors MOU Conference last week, where ESUG's work on the Saker Falcon featured again. The International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey has also joined SUME in a bid for a Workshop on Community-based Conservation through Sustainable Use at IUCN's World Conservation Congress in Hawaii next year.

Brazil, Argentina, Finland, Sweden, Qatar, Abu Dhabi between 4 August and 13 September, to report on the Saker portals at the generous invitation of the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey, and to talk on hunting in protected areas for an agency of the Finnish government, including a side meeting with Chair of CEM's Resilience Thematic Group.

Participants of 15 countries met in Vienna on 23-25 June 2015 for the General Meeting of European Sustainable Use Group and the inaugural meeting of IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management's thematic group on Sustainable Use and Management of Ecosystems. Reports can now be downloaded in the right column of the meeting page.

Just two weeks after decisions taken in Vienna, and thanks to tremendous efforts by 21 country coordinators, ESUG has re-launched Naturalliance with 3 new topics, and made the networking website System for Community Liaison available for a yearly subscription of just €99. 

ESUG will meet during 23-25 June 2015 to hold a series of meetings, including its biennial GM at 14:00 on 24 June, at the Veterinary Medical Institute of the University of Vienna.

At its General Meeting in Brussels, the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey (IAF) will launch the practitioner site  and science site in a project managed for IAF and UNEP-CMS by European Sustainable Use Group.