On November 15th 2007 my best friend, long-time mentor, and closest confidante Peter Mowday died of cancer after a long pain-filled struggle that had lasted two years. It was a desperately sad end to a life lived to the full.

I first met Peter almost twenty-five years ago when I moved “down south” to live in Bath in Wiltshire. I’d been given his phone number by a birder who’d suggested I get in touch with him: I did, and our first birding trip together (down to Portland Bill, Dorset in August 1983) was the start of probably the most important friendship I’ve ever had. His death has left a huge hole in my life, and of course in the lives of his family and his other friends (of which he had many).

Peter (photo right) was a life-long naturalist and a passionate conservationist. A Head Teacher by profession he spent many years doing his best to educate and enlighten those he came into contact with (myself included, whom he long ago nicknamed “The Gobi Desert”), and for many years was the Secretary of the Portland Bill Bird Observatory where right up until his last weeks alive he was putting into place conservation measures that would last well into the future. In his memory I would like to do the same.

With encouragement from my wife-to-be, Jo, and the good chaps at 10,000 Birds (Mike and Corey), I’ve decided to set up the “Peter Mowday Conservation Fund Award” to permanently honour Peter’s memory. I’ve thought long and hard about the best way to set up and promote this fund and annual award, and - while I would like the Fund to eventually achieve charitable status - what I’ve decided to do is to set-up a Paypal account as an ‘Award Fund’ with an annual 500GBP (currently 985USD) personal donation, and I’d like to announce that any money raised before the end of April this year (2008) will be sent to the conservation organisation Birds Korea to help support the team who will conduct and promote the 2008 Saemangeum Shorebird Monitoring Programme (SSMP)*.

I’m pleased to be able to announce, too, that Peter’s wife, Jo Mowday, has kindly offered to oversee the Paypal ‘Award Fund’ account as a sort of ‘independent auditor’ into the future. We will also be deciding together where the 2009 Award will be sent: we’ll be accepting nominations for the Award from June 2008 and donating the money on November 15th 2008 (the anniversary of Peter’s death).

I have never been very good at asking others to join what is essentially a personally motivated campaign - but if any readers of 10,000 Birds (or of anything else for that matter) would like to make a donation to the Award fund I would of course be extremely grateful. All donations will be acknowledged, and auditing will be available on request. Just click the Donate button below, and please feel free to donate any amount no matter how small or large.

If you would like more details please contact me: charlie10000birds - AT - gmail - DOT - com

On behalf of many people, and on behalf of Peter Mowday, many thanks.

I’m launching the Peter Mowday Conservation Fund on the 2nd of February which each year is designated World Wetlands Day. It marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Each year since 1997, government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and groups of citizens at all levels of the community have taken advantage of the opportunity to undertake actions aimed at raising public awareness of wetland values and benefits and the Ramsar Convention. The Convention’s suggested theme for World Wetlands Day, 2 February 2008, is “Healthy Wetlands, Healthy People“, and this will also be the theme for Ramsar’s 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to be held in October-November 2008 in the Republic of Korea (South Korea).

As anyone who has followed the catastrophic reclamation of 40,000 hectares of internationally-important tidal-flats and estuary shallows at Saemangeum, on South Korea’s west coast, will understand holding the Ramsar Convention in South Korea is both intensely ironic and a great opportunity: an irony because Saemangeum was for many years the world’s largest wetland reclamation project, and an opportunity because it gives NGOs and activists a great chance to protest any further planned wetland development. And the NGO I fervently support to do this work is Birds Korea.

Back in 2002 I co-founded what would become Birds Korea with my brother Nial, Birds Korea’s dynamic and dedicated Director, precisely because I wanted to help his mission to protect South Korea’s threatened wetlands. Whilst my passion has remained undimmed, my energy hasn’t. I’ve had to give up some of the time I devoted to Birds Korea, but Nial is regularly working twelve hour days and the organisation is going from strength to strength under his guidance (check out the newly re-designed website - totally re-vamped by Birds Korea English-language website manager Andreas Kim - to find out what the group is doing on a daily basis).

One of Birds Korea’s most important projects has been the development of the SSMP. Held in conjunction with the Australasian Wader Studies Group, the SSMP has collected scientifically-verifiable data on the (declining) numbers of shorebirds staging at the Saemangeum area since 2006 - thus both refuting the Korean government’s statements that the shorebirds would simply “go somewhere else” in the area, and creating a model that can be used by shorebird researchers all over the world.

It’s a hugely important programme, and the SSMP Reports published in 2006 and 2007 (click the images below for links) have been widely lauded by shorebird researchers for their professionalism, methodology, and ground-breaking presentation.

* The three-year Saemangeum Shorebird Monitoring Program (SSMP), conducted by Birds Korea in partnership with the Australasian Wader Studies Group, is a uniquely important program in a number of ways:

1) Saemangeum was the most important known shorebird site in the whole of the Yellow Sea (and likely in East Asia), itself a key region for long-range migratory shorebirds. Saemangeum is comprised of two BirdLife-defined Important Birds Areas and even in 2007 still remained the most important known staging site in the world for the (critically) Endangered and extraordinarily charismatic Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Saemangeum also supported internationally important concentrations of e.g. Alaskan-breeding Dunlin; New Zealand wintering Bar-tailed Godwit; and 30% of the world’s Great Knot. Its international importance to shorebirds cannot be overestimated.

2) The neighboring Geum Estuary (likewise covered by the SSMP) is also comprised of two BirdLife-listed Important Bird Areas, and is now known to be a key site for Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Nordmann’s Greenshank and up to 50% of the world’s Eastern Oystercatcher. It too remains threatened by complete reclamation (as do many other of Korea’s and the Yellow Sea’s most bird-important tidal-flats).

3) The SSMP is the only scientifically-rigid and open program to monitor and publicise the impacts of the Saemangeum reclamation on shorebirds, and to promote the international importance of the neighboring Geum. It is indeed the only such program of its kind ongoing in South Korea or the Yellow Sea - a core region where the rapid degradation and destruction of tidal-flats is threatening a very wide range of shorebird and other specialised species (e.g. Black-faced Spoonbill, Chinese Egret and Saunders’s Gull).

4) The SSMP provides rigid and scientific data, for use in efforts to win restoration of tidal-flow to Saemangeum and the full protection of the Geum Estuary, and also for those working against tidal-flat loss throughout the Flyway and the rest of the world. SSMP data from both 2006 and 2007 have already been released through internet and mass media, in publications and in meetings, in Korean, in English and in several other major languages. Closer to home, the SSMP has kept the spotlight on Saemangeum, and has already strongly influenced the suspension (but not yet the full cancellation) of the proposed reclamation of the neighboring Geum Estuary. The SSMP works.

5) In a nation without any international conservation NGO presence, the SSMP also provides the first significant opportunity for people outside of South Korea to directly involve in and successfully support “domestic” shorebird and tidal-flat conservation. It therefore has the additional value of providing useful experiences that can support other major Korean bird conservation programs - e.g. for the DMZ and for threatened riverine and forest species.

6) The SSMP is at the core of a global strategy to get attention focused on the need to conserve tidal-flats and global Flyways at the next triennial Ramsar “Wise Use of Wetlands” conference - to be held in South Korea in late 2008 (this meeting can be seen in a way as the Wetland Conservation World Cup and Super Bowl combined!).

7) While the SSMP has recieved essential (and much appreciated) funding from several donors, the program urgently needs further volunteers and funds for 2008.

In 2008, Birds Korea and the AWSG aim to:

a) Conduct supplemental shorebird and tidal-flat surveys and seminars along the rest of the South Korean coast;
b) Publish a three-year report for delivery of the SSMP results prior to the next Ramsar Conference (October 28-November 4, 2008);
c) Help support the publication of an attractive “Shorebirds of the Yellow Sea and Flyway” book;
d) Organise a major meeting preceding the Ramsar conference, to share data and refine conservation strategies.

All of these related projects require additional funds and volunteer support.

[Information provided by Nial Moores Director Birds Korea]