IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

The Flamingo Specialist Group (FSG) was established in 1978 at Tour du Valat in France, under the leadership of Dr. Alan Johnson, who coordinated the group until 2004. Currently, the group is coordinated from the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT), as part of the Specialist Group Network of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, and Wetlands International (formerly the IWRB).

The FSG is a global network of flamingo specialists (both scientists and non-scientists) concerned with the study, monitoring, management and conservation of the world’s six flamingo species. Its role is to actively promote flamingo research and conservation worldwide by encouraging information exchange and cooperation among these specialists, and with other relevant organisations, and by producing international action plans for the most threatened of the flamingo species.

FSG members include experts in both in-situ (wild) and ex-situ (captive) flamingo conservation of all six species, as well as in fields ranging from field surveys to breeding biology, infectious diseases, toxicology, movement tracking and data management. There are currently over 200 members from 55 countries around the world, from India to Chile, and from Finland to South Africa. Further information about the FSG, its membership, governance, list serve, and annual bulletin is available here

An international single-species action plan for the conservation of the Lesser Flamingo (Phoenicopterus minor) is being developed by the FSG and Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) under the auspices of the African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). It has been compiled by Dr Brooks Childress, Chair of the FSG; Dr Baz Hughes, Head of Species Conservation at WWT; and Dr Szabolcs Nagy, Senior Biodiversity Officer at Wetlands International, based on input from species experts at a workshop in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2006 organised by the FSG. The action plan draft is going through rigorous consultations including species experts, government officials from the range states, CMS Scientific Council members and AEWA Technical Committee members. It should be endorsed for implementation by early 2008.

An international action plan for the conservation of the Andean Flamingo (Phoenicoparrus andinus) and the James’s Flamingo (Phoenicoparrus jamesi) is being developed by the FSG, in cooperation with the Grupo para la Conservación de Flamencos Altoandinos (GCFA), under the auspices of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). It is being compiled by Dr Felicity Arengo, Western Hemisphere Chair of the FSG, who will also be chairing an action plan workshop of species experts in Argentina in June 2007.

A new network of in-situ and ex-situ conservation organisations was launched in November 2007 to focus on the conservation of the Caribbean Flamingo. This new initiative (Grupo para la Conservación del Flamenco Caribeño) is coordinated by FSG member Dr Nancy Clum of the Wildlife Conservation Society, with the assistance of Dr Felicity Arengo of the American Museum of Natural History, the FSG Western Hemisphere Chair. The purpose of this new group is to arrange funding and coordinate research and conservation activities for the Caribbean Flamingo.

Nigel Jarrett
Mark Anderson
Felicity Arengo
Rodrigo Migoya
Boudjéma Samraoui

Nigel Jarrett

_{Nigel Jarrett 
Photo: IUCN/SSC Flamingo Specialist Group}

In the early 1970s Nigel Jarrett had an unexpected first encounter with a flamingo on a coastal mudflat near his home in the north east of England – unexpected, because his home was then 52º N! As a schoolboy birder he identified the bird as Chilean Flamingo and therefore an escapee from a nearby zoo collection. That bird got him hooked on waterbirds and when for his 10th th birthday he was given a copy of Janet Kear and Nicole Duplaix-Hall’s book, Flamingos, he knew there was only one place where he should work when he grew up – the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge, UK! Since graduating from Newcastle University (UK), Nigel Jarrett has been WWT’s Aviculture Manager based at Slimbridge. He is responsible for the captive management of almost 800 flamingos and over 5000 wildfowl at seven WWT centres in the UK. With 25 years hands-on experience, he has worked at home and abroad with all the world’s flamingos and all but 10 of the world’s 163 wildfowl species. At WWT he seeks to develop ex situ conservation projects which contribute directly to species conservation in the wild (e.g. by using captive birds to develop best practice techniques for use by field ornithologists). In recent years he and colleagues, have developed flamingo husbandry techniques that have resulted in WWT gaining global recognition as a Flamingo Flock Factory - WWT’s flamingo flocks now produce 70-100 young each year. Since 2000, almost 500 of these young birds have been relocated to other zoo collections around the world, generating funds for in situ conservation while reducing the demand for wild caught birds. In addition to his many duties, Nigel is currently Assistant Chair of the Flamingo Specialist Group.

_{Mark Anderson
Photo: IUCN/SSC Flamingo Specialist Group}

Mark lives in Kimberley, South Africa, in the arid Northern Cape Province, which is fortunate as the largest permanent population of Lesser Flamingos in all of southern Africa (approximately 20,000, or one-third of the southern African population) is located at Kamfers Dam, about 5 km north of the city. In September 2006, Mark’s ten-year-old dream was realized when Ekapa Mining constructed a 25 x 250 m artificial flamingo breeding island at Kamfers Dam. Within weeks, the flamingos started using the island and now, on most nights, 10,000+ Lesser Flamingos can be seen roosting on this new island. During the 2006/7 austral summer, the Lesser Flamingos constructed about 160 nests and laid two eggs, but did not proceed further with this first breeding attempt. This important conservation project has received much positive publicity, on television, radio and in newspapers, magazines and journals. Ekapa Mining has been nominated for a Nedbank Green Mining Award for the project. Mark has also been instrumental in ensuring the conservation of the important Kamfer’s Dam wetland. He was responsible for the erection of two large information boards at the Dam, and is currently raising funds for a flamingo viewing platform and a webcam which will be placed on the flamingo island. Mark has been monitoring flamingo numbers at wetlands in the arid Northern Cape Province, South Africa, since 1991, and during 2005, he conducted an operation to rescue Greater Flamingo chicks from a pan near Vanwykslei, after the wetland dried up and the birds started dying. In September 2008, Mark will co-convene a symposium and round table discussion on Africa’s flamingos at the Pan African Ornithological Congress in Cape Town.

_{Felicity Arengo standing left 
Photo: IUCN/SSC Flamingo Specialist Group}

Felicity is a wildlife ecologist with over 15 years experience working on research and conservation projects in the neotropics. She is a native of Argentina, where she began her studies at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. After working as a field research technician for several years she enrolled in graduate school where she discovered the subject that would captivate and entertain her for years (and perhaps decades) to come: flamingos. “I will never forget the first time I saw flamingos in the wild” she recalls. “We were driving a boat slowly up a coastal lagoon in Mexico and from a distance I could see a pink line along the mangrove fringe. As we got closer the line materialized into hundreds of Caribbean Flamingos. It was a magical moment that I get to relive every time I go to flamingo wetland sites.” Felicity obtained a MSc. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry studying Caribbean Flamingo foraging behavior and conservation in Yucatan. In 1997 she went to work for the Latin America Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, through which she became involved with the Grupo para la Conservación de Flamencos Altoandinos (GCFA), a group focused on research and conservation of James’ and Andean Flamingos, and their wetland habitats of the high Andes in South America. With GCFA colleagues, Felicity has been studying the movements and habitat use of Andean Flamingos using satellite telemetry. They are also working on the design and implementation of a network of priority wetlands for conservation of flamingos, and in June 2007, will hold an action planning workshop for the Andean and James’s flamingos. Felicity has been the Western Hemisphere Chair of the FSG for many years, and since December 2004, Associate Director of the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History.

The Caribbean Flamingo Conservation Program (CFCP) in Mexico is coordinated by Rodrigo Migoya, Director of the non-governmental organization Niños y Crías NGO. In Mexico, Caribbean Flamingos live mainly along the 450 km corridor between the Biosphere Reserves of Ría Lagartos and Los Petenes on the northern coastline of the Yucatan Peninsula. The estimated population is between 44,000 - 54,000 individuals. The CFCP has three main objectives: 1) Assure the availability of flamingo nesting grounds, 2) Ensure that the feeding grounds are in good condition, and 3) Guarantee the flow of freshwater springs at crucial feeding and nesting areas. A banding program was initiated in 1999, and migration results showed that birds from the Yucatan breeding sites visited Florida and Texas. In 2001, three individuals where spotted in Cuba. Such findings confirmed that the Yucatan population is part of a metapopulation distributed throughout the Caribbean Islands and Gulf of Mexico. The main Yucatan nesting grounds are located within the Ría Lagartos Biosphere Reserve comprised of shallow mudflats often flooded by heavy rains that cause the loss of nests. The restoration of Punta Mecoh Island in 2003 and 2004 resulted on an increase in the breeding bird population, from 26,000 individuals in 1999 to 44,000 in 2005. Hurricane Wilma eroded and hardened the island in 2005, so in 2006 flamingos nested at an adjacent mudflat where eggs were washed away after a heavy rain in June, calling for a new restoration in March-April 2007. Access ramps and protective wooden boards were used, implementing techniques from Fuente de Piedra Natural Reserve in Spain. Currently, they are waiting for the flamingos to adopt this new structure.
 

Konrad Lorentz has been instrumental in shaping up my career which took a roundabout way. I graduated in nuclear physics in 1979 from Algiers University. After acquiring in 1985 a D.Phil. in structural molecular biology (Wolfson College, Oxford University), I spent three years as a Research Fellow in molecular biology at Harvard University. I was equally blessed in solving the structure of HLA A2 and auditing courses of illustrious colleagues like S.J. Gould and E.O. Wilson. In 1988, I moved back to an economically declining Algeria and fairly quickly focused on the study of the ecology and biodiversity of wetlands and carried out research on dragonflies, zooplankton and waterbirds. Beginning in 2001, as Head of the Laboratoire de recherche des zones humides, I focused, with the help of the Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Environnement, on the ecology of herons and other colonial waterbirds. In 2004, we discovered a breeding colony of the Greater Flamingo at Garaet Ezzemoul. Protective measures led to successful breeding in 2005 and 2006. The MAVA foundation has since backed up the Flamingo project and a ringing program is carried out with the active support of the Station Biologique de la Tour du Valat. Biodiversity has enriched my life and I hope to do my little bit to pay it back.