EU Action Plan for Reducing Incidental Catches of Seabirds in Fishing Gears - birdlife_international_en.pdf

BirdLife International is a global partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainable use of natural resources. Globally, the BirdLife Partnership operates in more than 100 countries and territories, is represented in 42 European countries and active in all EU Member States.
We are committed to working towards ecologically sustainable fisheries for the benefit of the wider marine environment and viable livelihoods for fishermen and their communities. In pursuit of this, for the past ten years we have been deeply involved in the promotion and development of an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries and the policy development towards a more integrated approach to maritime use.
BirdLife greatly welcomes this consultation and is uniquely qualified among NGOs to respond to it. BirdLife's Global Seabird Programme was established in 1997 to address the threat of extinction to albatross populations posed by longline fisheries, subsequently extending this to trawls and other relevant gears. We are active observers in all the tuna commissions (RFMOs) and have contributed significantly to the development and implementation of their seabird conservation measures. In 2006, BirdLife further initiated the Albatross Task Force to work directly with fishers on the development of mitigation measures and expert teams are now operational in seven countries in southern Africa and Latin America. In support of this effort, BirdLife has produced, jointly with ACAP, a series of bycatch mitigation factsheets for vessels, decision-makers and practitioners.
In the context of this consultation, for the past ten years BirdLife has been making the case for an EU PoA and gathering the evidence to inform its content. We also participated in the expert consultation which generated the FAO's 2008 Best Practice Technical Guidelines (BPTG) for IPOA/NPOA-Seabirds.
This paper provides BirdLife International response to European Commission consultation including comments and recommendations.