Background to the conference development and planning...

There have been at least five previous meetings where hornbills have been the principal theme. There was a workshop at Singapore in 1990, where the Hornbill Specialist Group of the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP, now Birdlife International) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), produced a world-wide analysis of hornbill conservation requirements. Then, in 1992, the Hornbill Project Thailand at Mahidol University, Bangkok, headed by Pilai Poonswad (later Doctor and Professor), arranged an Asian Hornbill Conference and workshop. This was followed by an International Hornbill Conference and workshop, also at Bangkok, in 1996, and a third meeting, again in Thailand at Phuket, in 2000. In the meantime, the Hornbill Advisory Group of the European Union had also organised a workshop, mainly about the captive management of hornbills, at Malaga, Spain in 1998.

These meetings accelerated a growing international interest in hornbills, leading to new books, magazine articles, TV programmes and scientific publications about them, especially from South-east Asia. Hornbill biology was recognised as among the most fascinating of any birds in the world, hornbill conservation emerged as a key component in rainforests and savannas, and hornbill management proved to be especially challenging to reserve managers and aviculturalists.

Hornbills, as sole members of the avian order Bucerotiformes, only occur in sub-Saharan Africa and South-east Asia (from Pakistan to New Guinea and adjacent islands). So it is important that this, the 4th International Hornbill Conference, be held on the African continent for the first time and be a great success.