26/05/2026
At this month’s 15th Conference of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS COP15) in Campo Grande, Brazil, 105 countries agreed to add 40 migratory animal species and subspecies to international protection lists — the largest expansion in years, and roughly triple the number added at the previous conference.
Among those newly protected are the cheetah, giant otter, striped hyena, snowy owl, and several hammerhead shark species, including the great hammerhead and scalloped hammerhead.
The significance lies in what makes migratory wildlife so vulnerable: no single country can protect them alone. These species move across borders, oceans, and continents, often facing entirely different levels of protection along their routes. What is safeguarded in one region may be unprotected - or actively threatened - in the next.
CMS, a UN-backed treaty established in 1979, exists to coordinate protection across these migration pathways through legally binding agreements between 133 member states.
A key outcome of COP15 was also the Marine Flyway Framework, which maps six global ocean corridors used by 151 seabird species and identifies over 1,300 critical breeding, feeding, and stopover sites for coordinated protection.
While implementation will determine real impact, past recovery stories show what’s possible. The Iberian lynx, once near extinction, now exceeds 2,000 individuals after coordinated conservation across borders - a reminder that international cooperation can reverse even severe decline.
Progress at this scale is rare. But it proves something important: when nations align around movement, not borders, conservation gains ground.
