delegates from 23 countries recently met in New Delhi to finalise and endorse a proposed action plan to conserve migratory waterbirds and wetlands in the Central Asian Flyway (caf). The caf boundary includes 30 countries and 274 migratory waterbird species, of which 26 are globally threatened or near threatened. The decision to initiate the action plan was taken almost four years ago, at a meeting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. But the New Delhi meet was a damp squib. After three days of deliberations, the only notable progress it achieved was some modifications in the