A global threats overview for Numeniini populations: synthesising expert knowledge for a group of declining migratory birds

The Numeniini is a tribe of thirteen wader species (Scolopacidae, Charadriiformes) of which seven are near-threatened or globally threatened, including two critically endangered. To help inform conservation management and policy responses, we present the results of an expert assessment of the threats that members of this taxonomic group face across migratory flyways. Most threats are increasing in intensity, particularly in non-breeding areas, where habitat loss resulting from residential and commercial development, aquaculture, mining, transport, disturbance, problematic invasive species, pollution and climate change were regarded as having the greatest detrimental impact. Fewer threats (mining, disturbance, problematic native species and climate change) were identified as widely affecting breeding areas. Numeniini populations face the greatest number of non-breeding threats in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, especially those associated with coastal reclamation; related threats were also identified across the Central and Atlantic Americas, and East Atlantic flyways. Threats on the breeding grounds were greatest in Central and Atlantic Americas, East Atlantic and West Asian flyways. Three priority actions were associated with monitoring and research: to monitor breeding population trends (which for species breeding in remote areas may best be achieved through surveys at key non-breeding sites), to deploy tracking technologies to identify migratory connectivity, and to monitor land-cover change across breeding and non-breeding areas. Two priority actions were focused on conservation and policy responses: to identify and effectively protect key non-breeding sites across all flyways (particularly in the East Asian - Australasian Flyway), and to implement successful conservation interventions at a sufficient scale across human-dominated landscapes for species’ recovery to be achieved. If implemented urgently, these measures in combination have the potential to alter the current population declines of many Numeniini species and provide a template for the conservation of other groups of threatened species

Yemen and the Middle East Conference - The Challenge of Failing States and Transnational Terrorism

The preparatory debate of the Middle East Conference is dominated by major regional actors. Politically and geographically, Yemen represents the regional periphery and is not the focus of significant non-proliferation concerns. Sana’a has ratifi ed all three legal documents against nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. However, it is not altogether clear whether Yemen has consistently lived up to all its commitments. The regime of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh stood accused of having used nerve gas against protesters demanding his ouster. In addition, Yemen possesses a number of aircraft and missiles which might be used as delivery vehicles for weapons of mass destruction. The mandate for the Middle East Conference requires their abolishment as well – a task that could be made more diffi cult by the current instability. Moreover, Yemen’s status as a failing state at a geostrategically sensitive location poses profound challenges to regional and global security. Should Yemen become a failed state, human trafficking as well as weapons and drug smuggling could increase. The potential access of terrorist groups to chemical weapons or the means of producing them could seriously undermine regional and global security. The ongoing tensions in the country’s North also raise the specter of Yemen being drawn into the wider competition over regional influence between Riyadh and Tehran. With Iran’s traditional vehicles of power projection engulfed in the fall-out of the ‘Arab Spring’, Yemen’s instability offers Tehran an alternative route for pressuring Riyadh and its Western allies. Thus, addressing Yemen’s domestic crisis is of concern for the success of the Middle East Conference

Research Report 1 : The effect of roads and traffic on the breeding success of the Black-Tailed Godwit

De begeleider en/of auteur heeft geen toestemming gegeven tot het openbaar maken van de scriptie. The supervisor and/or the author did not authorize public publication of the thesis.

The costs and benifits of socially acquired information

De begeleider en/of auteur heeft geen toestemming gegeven tot het openbaar maken van de scriptie. The supervisor and/or the author did not authorize public publication of the thesis.

Amid high tensions, an urgent need for nuclear restraint

With tensions running high between the United States and Russia, North Korea conducting nuclear tests, and every nuclear-armed nation modernizing its arsenal, the world seems headed toward greater nuclear instability. Changing course will not be easy, and progress must begin with serious bilateral confidence-building, arms control, and disarmament efforts by Russia and the United States. But the two sides have expressed clearly divergent nuclear priorities in recent years, even as the danger of military escalation has increased. Meanwhile, the multilateral nonproliferation regime seems to be splitting into polarized camps, characterized by starkly differing views on the value, role, and risks of nuclear weapons. In such an environment, leaders can demonstrate prudence and restraint by working toward a universal no-first-use norm, conducting dialogue on de-alerting nuclear weapons, and developing effective verification procedures for decommissioning and destroying nuclear warheads. In the long run, the United States and Russia can still aim for a grand bargain on arsenal reductions. In the meantime, they and the other recognized nuclear weapon states can explore whether strategic stability can someday be maintained through means other than nuclear weapons–for example, through frameworks of cooperative alliances or weapons systems of the future