Goodbye ICBP - welcome, ^Jt 
BirdLife International! SfeH? 
On 3 March 1993, a new force for bird conservation was born - BirdLife 
International. The old International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP), 
with which OSME has worked so closely, has been transformed into this 
new global partnership. OSME hopes to work equally closely with 
BirdLife International. 
Never have the threats to birds been so severe: around 10% of all bird 
species are now giving cause for concern. And never has biodiversity had 
such prominence in the world's media. But until now there has been no 
world organisation to fight for birds with the strength of some of the 
wider environmental alliances. 
For all its merits, ICBP was a low-key body, rarely achieving the publicity 
it deserved. If you need confirmation of the importance of ICBP, read the 
review of Putting Biodiversity on the Map in this Bulletin; better still, read 
the report. BirdLife International, by contrast, will be a truly international 
partnership of the world's major bird conservation organisations, with 
all the power for action and publicity that brings. 
Eventually, for each country there will be an official BirdLife partner. In 
the UK, this will be The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; in 
Turkey, the Society for the Protection of Nature (DHKD) will assume the 
role. Many partners have already been announced, and negotiations are 
taking place with conservation bodies in many other countries. The 
BirdLife partnership will benefit them all. 
BirdLife International will provide a forum for sharing expertise and 
resources and will provide a basis for international co-operation on a 
scale hitherto unseen in the bird conservation world . The time is right for 
this new, bolder partnership. OSME gives it our full support. It must 
succeed. 
For more information about BirdLife International, please write to: 
BirdLife International, Wellbrook Court, Girton Road, Cambridge CB3 
ONA, UK. 
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