Central Asian Flyway

About Central Asian Flyway

• It covers a large continental area of Eurasia between the Arctic and Indian Oceans and the associated island chains.
• A flyway is a geographical region within which a single or group of migratory species completes its annual cycle — breeding, moulting, staging and non-breeding.
• There are nine flyways in the world.
• Geographically the flyway region covers 30 countries of North, Central and South Asia and Trans-Caucasus.
• There is an overlap between the CAF and the area of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), which was concluded in 1995, at The Hague, the Netherlands.
• Sixteen out of the thirty countries encompassed by the CAF are located in the AEWA Agreement Area.
• CAF migration routes include the steppes and cold deserts of Central Eurasia, and much of the Himalayan chain, where unique, high-altitude migrations such as those of the Bar-headed Goose, Anser indicus, take place.
• India’s Initiative: The 14 species which will be listed in CMS appendices include
  • Eurasian Lynx, Peruvian Pelican, Pallas’s Cat, Guanaco, Laulao Catfish, Balkan Lynx, Lahille’s Bottlenose Dolphin, Harbour Porpoise, Magellanic Plover, Bearded Vulture, Blackchin Guitarfish, Bull Ray, Lusitanian Cownose Ray and Gilded Catfish.
  • The adopted initiative includes the establishment of a coordinating unit in India with financial support from the Indian Government.

Q1) What is the International Single Species Action Plan?

It is the key instrument developed under the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA).

Source: Central Asian Flyway recognised to protect over 600 migratory bird species