ERBFacility 1st General Meeting (GM1)

Annual General Meetings
Start date
End date

The 1st General Meeting (GM1) was convened at IREC-CSIC, Ciudad Real, Spain back-to-back with the 2nd Management Committee Meeting.

GM1 brought together for the first time the ERBFacility community of Management Committee members and additional key resource persons active in the analytical, collections and field arenas in relation to the monitoring of contaminants in raptors.

Around 60 participants attended from 22 COST Member and Near Neighbour Countries. This included a multidisciplinary community of field ornithologists and ecologists, curators (from natural history museums, environmental specimen banks and others) and ecotoxicologists, as well as end users from the European Commission, European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

The opening plenary on Day 1 (Mon 19 Feb) provided an introduction to the Action and the activities of the Working Groups, and reflections from the European Commission and EFSA.

Day 2 (Tues 20 Feb) was dedicated to sequential Working Group (WG) sessions, allowing all participants to engage in all WGs in which they are interested and thereby promoting the all-important cross-WG integration and understanding. These sessions focused on discussing and planning WG activities through to the end of the second Grant Period (i.e. to 30/4/2019) including the establishment of Task Groups.

Day 3 (Weds 21 Feb) offered a fascinating field trip to view historic mercury mines and raptors in the region, and an opportunity for participants to network and foster collaborations.

GM1 closed on Day 4 (Thurs 22 Feb) AM with a plenary bringing together the outcomes of the WG sessions, and considering cross-cutting issues such as dissemination and communications. It included a presentation from ECHA.