AN ACTION PLAN FOR THE CONSERVATION OF OTTERS

A fundamental aspect of SSC's work is the determination or conservation priorities through the production of Action Plans. This task is included in the Commission's terms of reference. A number of high quality Action plans were prepared during the late 1970s, and the SSC Steering Committee has now requested that a new generation of such plans be produced. To assist us in these efforts, WWF have financed two salaried positions in the SSC Executive Office. This article is being written while discussions are still taking place between the Otter Specialist Group leadership and the Executive Office on how the OSG can take part in this new Action Planning process. These discussions might well have been finalised by the time this article is published, so I apologise for anything written here which is clearly out of date. The new generation of plans are all termed "Comprehensive Action Plans". They are the result of a study carried out by a Specialist Group which includes an overview of the status of all the species within their brief, a system of setting conservation priorities, and a compilation of proposed projects which address these priorities. Why are Action Plans needed? There are six principal reasons : 1. We need to know the priorities for species conservation, if we are to effectively channel limited funds towards the most urgent needs. A thorough knowledge of the priorities is also required if SSC, and its Specialist Groups, are to provide the high calibre advisory service which governments and conservation organisations require. 2. Not only do the priorities need to be known. They also need to be published and thoroughly documented. Specialist Groups and their members are not immortal, and information that merely resides in the collective consciousness of the Group is always liable to be lost. It is certainly not so readily available, and needs to be published in a coherent form as an Action Plan.