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Yesterday, ACAP Latest News looked back on highlights in albatross and petrel conservation during 2012 - and also reported on what ACAP has been doing and achieving over the year.

Today, befitting the start of a new year we look forward to what can be expected in 2013.

On the ACAP front a major activity will be holding the Seventh Meeting of its Advisory Committee in La Rochelle, France from 6 - 10 May 2013.  Meetings of the AC's Population and Conservation Status Working Group and Seabird Bycatch Working Group will be held at the same venue from 29 April to 3 May 2013.  As has been the practice over the last few years the Taxonomy Working Group is expected to submit its written report to the Advisory Committee for consideration.  It is also expected that the Advisory Committee will discuss a proposal from Chile to nominate its endemic and Vulnerable Pink-footed Shearwater Puffinus creatopus to the Agreement.

La Rochelle is a coastal city and sea port situated in the south-west of France on the Atlantic's Bay of Biscay.  Will the Balearic Shearwater P. mauretanicus, ACAP's most recently listed species, be foraging within the bay at the time?  Keep an eye on this web site to see what matters will be discussed at the meetings and to access meeting documents and information papers.

An incubating Southern Giant Petrel on Gough Island eyes up the ACAP Information Officer
Photograph by John Cooper

What else in 2013?  Efforts to eradicate alien mammals on albatross, petrel and shearwater breeding islands around the World will continue.  The World's single largest island eradication exercise to date on South Georgia (Islas Georgia del Sur)* starts with Phase 2 from this month to remove Norwegian Rats Rattus norvegicus, House Mice Mus musculus and Reindeer Rangifer tarandus (click here).  On Australia's Macquarie Island the post-eradication teams and their specially-trained dogs will continue to search for that last elusive European Rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus (click here).

Members of the ACAP Secretariat and Chief Officers will continue to travel to breeding sites for field work and to meetings in both hemispheres.  You can follow their movements and activities over the year by going to "Who is Where".

ACAP's Facebook Page reached the aimed-for 700 members by year-end; the next desideratum is to attain 1000 before the end of 2013.  It is considered that the Facebook Page reaches members of the concerned public who might not otherwise visit the web site, thus helping inform and educate.

As well as ACAP's own meeting, conservation of ACAP-listed and other seabirds will be discussed at a number of events around the World.  Next month sees the Pacific Seabird Group holding its 40th Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, USA.  Antarctica New Zealand and the Australian Antarctic Division will hold their first joint Antarctic science conference in Hobart, Tasmania from 25-27 June 2013 entitled 'Strategic Science in Antarctica' and the XIth SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) Biology Symposium will be held in Barcelona, Spain over 15-19 July 2013.

ACAP will be looking out to see if the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) finally adopts the proposed new Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean come the special intersessional meetings of the Scientific Committee and Commission, to be held in Bremerhaven, Germany over 11-16 July 2013.

As in previous years ACAP Latest News will endeavour, with the valued help of the regional ACAP News Correspondents, to report on these and other meetings through the year, along with continuing to feature abstracts of newly published scientific papers, reviews of books, reports of meetings of the tuna Regional Fishery Management Organizations (tRFMOs), news of field work and management activities, and more on the roles albatrosses and petrels play in culture, art and literature.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 01 January 2013

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.