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The Annual General Meeting and the 24th Sea Turtle Symposium in Costa Rica left us all with feelings of renewal and revitalization, and they have helped us maintain strong momentum in recent months. We have begun to review our membership in anticipation of the triennium, and are happy to welcome several new members to the MTSG; Yonat Swimmer (USA), Randall Arauz (Costa Rica), Rotney Piedra (Costa Rica), Carlos Mario Orrego (Costa Rica), Monica Aureggi (Italy), Jesús Tomás (Spain), Patricia Zarate (Ecuador), Claudia Ceballos (Colombia), Ibrahim Mahmoud (Oman), Abdulaziz Al-Kindy (Oman), Angela Formia (UK), Windia Adnyana (Indonesia), Simon Nzuki (Kenya), Yolanda Leon (Dominican Republic), Paul Hoejtes (Netherlands Antilles), Renato Cruz (Philippines), Ing Try (Cambodia), Josea Dossou-Bodjrenou (Benin), and Alexis Billes (France). With much valuable input from the membership, we have also rewritten the Member Terms of Reference, and will be circulating these at the onset of the new triennium. We have also begun to engage the wider membership in reviewing the outputs from last December’s Vision Meeting, most notably our new Vision and Mission Statements, which will be finalized in the coming months.

The MTSG has taken an active role in a number of recent issues relevant to marine turtle conservation. In early May, comments were submitted to the US Commission on Ocean Policy in response to their Preliminary Report, requesting improvement of sections pertaining to marine turtles and the threats they face, and offering assistance in revising these sections to adequately address marine turtle issues. Also in early May, the MTSG joined a coalition of several NGOs, calling on the UN General Assembly to declare an immediate moratorium on high seas bottom trawling. Both of these items are available on the MTSG website <http://www.iucn-mtsg.org>, or may be requested in hard copy form by contacting Brian Hutchinson.

We are also very proud to announce that Jeffrey Seminoff and the MTSG’s Green Turtle task Force have re-submitted the green sea turtle red listing assessment to the SSC office for review. We commend Jeff and others for their hard work and commitment to the red listing process, and look forward to circulating their assessment following its approval.

Finally, the MTSG is currently undergoing a change in structure. Rather than attempt to “manage” a disparate group of some 270 members from several dozen countries in a top-down fashion, we have decided to focus our efforts on empowering the existing regional groups of the MTSG with the tools, resources, and information to manage themselves as effectively as they can. As part of this change, we have begun to schedule regional meetings to address local needs and priorities, and ensure exchange of information with the global network. From now on, we will also use most of our space in the MTN to encourage reports from our Regional Vice-Chairs on the happenings in their region. Given the recent Sea Turtle Symposium and the flurry of related activity in Latin America, the following section, written by Mario Boza, MTSG Regional Vice-Chair for Latin America, and Clara Padilla, of the International Sea Turtle Society, provides an overview of some recent activities in their region.