At a meeting today at the UN Campus in Bonn, Germany, the plans for the Year of the Dolphin campaign in 2008 were discussed by representatives of CMS, ACCOBAMS, ASCOBANS, WDCS and TUI. This included going through a list of conservation projects, which will now be evaluated by the Cetacean Liaison Group, a group of experts who are advising the CMS Secretariat and other CMS bodies on cetacean-related matters, with a view to identifying priorities. The most important projects should then receive support through the YoD Partners and other organisations. Another important topic was the continuation of educational and awareness campaigns worldwide, building on the broad array of educational materials available on this website.
At the occasion of the meeting, two website publications were also released. The first is a recap of some outstanding activities and achievements of Year of the Dolphin during 2007. The "Choice 20" list can be downloaded here.
Outstanding news is that the Dolphin Manual, a highly popular educational brochure for children, has been published in Portuguese now. This ninth language version was made possible though the free-of-charge translation kindly provided by the Portuguese NGO CETUS and the coordination through the ASCOBANS Secretariat. We are very pleased to have contributed to making this publication available in one of our new Range States and this way hope to help raise awareness of small cetacean conservation.