The Sixth Session of ACAP’s Meeting of Parties wrapped up four days of deliberations last week Friday in Skukuza Rest Camp in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. The session was opened by Dr Luthando Dziba of South African National Parks. In his address he said “South Africa hopes that other range states for albatrosses and petrels will soon join the Agreement and that, in collaboration with other organisations, the Agreement will shortly make significant progress with regard to the understanding and addressing the threats to albatross and petrels on the High Seas”.

Dr Dziba also noted that South Africa has substantially reduced the by-catch of seabirds in its pelagic long-line fisheries, from 1.6 birds per 1000 hooks at the turn of the century to fewer than 0.5 birds per 1000 hooks at present (click here).  “During his address Dziba expressed South Africa’s gratitude for the wonderful generosity of the ACAP States and organisations, and all the hard work that the ACAP Secretariat have contributed to ensuring the success of the Agreement from its infancy to a stage where it has now been in operation for 14 years and has made substantial progress.”

South Africa hosted delegates to a number of game drives during the week. With friendly competition between the game-viewing vehicles, a combined list of 38 mammal species was made, including the “Big Five” of Lion, Leopard, Cape Buffalo, White Rhinoceros and African Elephant, as well as Giraffe, Hippopotamus and several species of buck. Smaller mammals seen in the evening and at night by spotlight included Spotted Hyaena, Honey Badger, African Wild Cat, Civet and Scrub Hare. For a number of delegates from outside Africa views of these charismatic animals was a novel and lifetime experience, many of whom spent time bird watching as well.

During the session Australia made an offer to host the Seventh Session of the Meeting of Parties in 2021, when the Agreement will be 20 years old.  The 11th Meeting of ACAP's Advisory Committee is due to be held next year in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil.

Following adoption of the session’s report, the Chair, Ashley Naidoo of South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs closed the meeting, thanking the delegates for their contributions and wishing them safe journeys to their homes.  He also thanked South Africa for hosting the session and for its hospitality.

A group of MoP6 Delegates after a morning game drive

Three Ranges States, Canada, Mexico and the USA, attended as observers; Mexico for the first time at an ACAP meeting with Humberto Berlanga García behind his national flag.

Katy Sater and Mi Ae Kim (USA) and Ken Morgan (Canada) complete the group

MoP6 Delegates gather outside the Nombolo Mdhluli Conference Centre at Skukuza

Photographs by John Cooper

On the last evening South Africa hosted delegates to a traditional potjiekos meal (meat and vegetables slow cooked in a cast-iron pot over an open fire) in an outdoor boma (stockade) within the camp.  A vegerarian potjie was also available and proved popular.

The report of the session will be posted to this web site in ACAP's three official languages of English, French and Spanish in due course.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 14 May 2018

It's not all work at the Sixth Session of ACAP's Meeting of Parties in South Africa's Kruger National Park

All aboard! National Parks guide and driver, Patrick, advises on protocols and rules before a night drive

Night drive: we could use the spotlights provided.  Elephants, rhino and hyenas all seen

After the two-hour night drive, warming up around the "bush boma" campfire.  Kudu on the menu

Elephants at an artificial water hole

White Rhino on the road

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 11 May 2018, updated 12 May 2018

Maria Gill and Gavin Mouldey have produced a children’s book telling the story of Toroa, the 500th Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi chick to hatch on Taiaroa Head, New Zealand’s mainland breeding site on South Island. ACAP Latest News has reviewed a number of books written about albatrosses for children in the last few years. This is one I particularly like.

Maria Gill, the book’s award-winning author with no less than 62 children’s books to her name and Gavin Mouldey, the illustrator, tell Toroa’s story, starting from a downy chick being fed by his mother, fledging “on a blustery morning” and his subsequent wanderings at sea as a juvenile. On his at-sea journeying he is frightened away by bird-scaring lines deployed behind a longline fishing vessel. He flies on to reach the coast of South America, coming close to the vicinity of a volcanic eruption when in Chilean waters. He then encounters a floating plastic “garbage patch” but escapes after swallowing and then regurgitating a red plastic bottle top.

After five years at sea the Toroa (which means ‘albatross’ in the Maori language) of the book returns to Taiaroa Head, where he finds and courts a partner, and after two years breeds and produces his own chick that successfully fledges. The story is told in short sentences suitable to be read out aloud to a child or for older children to read to themselves. Gavin Mouldey’s evocative paintings fill each page. Novel to my growing collection of albatross books for children, is a four-page wide centre fold with a large illustration of Toroa in flight; a drawing of a human with his arms spread to scale is included to show just how big a royal albatross is.

The real Toroa (click here) hatched in February 2007 and was fitted with a satellite transmitter before fledging in September that year and was then tracked on its at-sea travels for a year (when the instrument stopped reporting) as a juvenile, free-flying albatross. Toroa, like his namesake of the book, is now a successful breeder on Taiaroa Head, returning for the first time in February 2104 and rearing its first chick to fledging in September 2017, keeping the cycle of life continuing and adding to the health of an iconic colony that is accessible to public viewing from an observation centre. This factual information is given in boxes, adding greatly, in my mind, to the book’s value: a parent can use this extra information to add to the illustrated storyline on each page. To me the only partially fictionalized account of a real albatross that is still alive and was breeding successfully less than a year ago adds to the book’s charm and interest.

Toroa as a chick in 2007, photograph by Lyndon Perriman

Toroa returns to Taiaroa Head as an adult for the first time in 2014

An intriguing fact is that one of Toroa’s grandparents was Grandma (all the Taiaroa Head birds carry unique colour bands to allow for individual recognition), the famous Northern Royal Albatross which lived for over 60 years. Perhaps Toroa also has longevity genes (or luck!) and will live a long life.

So, parents – if you want your children to grow up to be albatrossphiles (like this reviewer) then this is the book to get to start them off.

Additional notes for parents and teachers can be found here.  Previous information on the real Toroa in ALN here.

Toroa is not the first real albatross to have a children's book written about it.  Wisdom the famous 60-something Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis of Midway Island was the first (click here for the ALN review).

Reference:

Gill, Maria & Mouldey, Gavin 2017. Toroa’s Journey. Nelson: Potton & Burton. 32 pp. with an eight-page gatefold. ISBN 978 0 947503 53 6. NZ$ 29.99 hardback, NZ$ 19.99 paperback.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 May 2018

Delegates to the Sixth Session of ACAP's Meeting of Parties in the Skukuza Rest Camp, Kruger National Park, South Africa, 7-11 May 2018

Ashley Naidoo (MoP6 Chair), Nathan Walker (Chair, ACAP Advisory Committee) and Marco Favero (ACAP Executive Secretary) confer

Marco Favero (ACAP Executive Secretary) gets interviewed for television...

... as does Nathan Walker (Chair, ACAP Advisory Committee)

South African delegates smile for the camera...

... as does a group of Spanish-speaking delegates

Anton Wolfaardt (ACAP Secretariat) at the white board

Where's Wally?  The ACAP Information Officer's bag is ready to go

All photographs by John Cooper

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 May 2018