Dear colleagues and OSG members!

At the Otter Colloquium in Korea we presented the concept of monitoring and assessing conservation status for the Otter Lutra lutra in Denmark/EU according to the EEC Habitats Directive.

Now EU member states with otter (22) have reported on the conservation status in the biogeographically regions of their country. The EU commission has followed this up with announcing a public consultation period for these assessments from 28. July to 15 September 2008

Please find here a note from the Commission on the subject.  For ease of use, please find below the link to the internet site of the consultation. Here you can search and view the national results produced in the frame of Article 17 reporting: http://biodiversity.eionet.europa.eu/article17

It’s now possible for everybody to comment on the results - and it is quite obviously a golden opportunity, especially for the European Group, to raise their voice if they find something is wrong. But we think it should be interesting for OSG members all over the world to follow this European process!

At the EOW 2008 in Slovenia we will give an overview of the conservation status of the otter in EU/Europe based on the article 17 reporting of the Habitats Directive - followed by a workshop, where we present the conservation status of the otter in each country. As new coming members Bulgaria and Romania was not obliged to report, but we hope that it would be possible to make an “unofficial” assessment for the status of the otter in these two countries.

Hope to see many of you in Slovenia in October!

Bjarne & Aksel

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Bjarne Søgaard & Aksel Bo Madsen
Senior Biologist & Director of Research Department

National Environmental Research Institute
Department of Wildlife Ecology and Biodiversity
University of Aarhus
Grenaavej 12, DK-8410 Rønde, Denmark
Tel: +4589201700 (office)
Tel: +4589201510 (direct)
Fax: +4589201514
E-mail: bjs@dmu
http://vibi.dmu.dk