Egypt’s Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad announced on Tuesday the selection of the Migratory Soaring Birds Project as a model of best practices for projects funded by the Global Environment Facility in 2022.
In 2020, the project also won the Energy Globe Award as a leading project in conserving migratory birds as one of the natural resources.
She explained that the selection came due to the successful and transformative results achieved in mainstreaming conservation measures for migratory soaring birds in the five main sectors; hunting, energy, tourism, agriculture and waste management, that directly affect migratory soaring birds along the migration path in the Rift Valley / the Red Sea.
The Minister of Environment added that the project had achieved many global environmental benefits through the development of governmental and private sector policies and practices across the five sectors, as it set guidelines for these sectors to participate across countries in the migration path in order to raise awareness of preserving migratory soaring birds and build the capacities of local partner organizations.
Egypt is considered the second most important bird migration path in the world, as the migration path is in the Rift Valley / Red Sea, where more than 1.5 million birds representing at least 37 species of soaring birds, including five globally threatened species, us this path between their breeding grounds in Europe and western Asia and their wintering grounds in Africa.
The Migratory Soaring Birds project aims to mainstream considerations concerning migratory soaring birds in the productive sectors along the flyway that poses the greatest risk to the safe migration of birds. The project is funded by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
