The country teams from India, Nepal, Mongolia, regional team from US and Centre for Large Landscape Conservation met in Mongolia for the annual progress and planning meeting from 17-24 June 2024. WWF Mongolia hosted the annual meeting where the country teams along with the Project Management Team (PMT) for a week and discussed on the ongoing activities of ALIGN project in all three countries. The meeting week was followed by 3 days field trip to the Gobi desert where participants interacted with a railway company and visited the wildlife friendly mitigation measures constructed across the railway line.

The annual meeting also hosted the governmental authorities of Mongolia including Ministry of Roads and Transportation, Ministry of Environment and Tourism, National Mongolian University, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Tavan Talgoi Railway and Banking Association of Mongolia who shared ongoing progresses and coordination through the ALIGN project.

All the country teams produced the progresses and set the targets and activities to ensure effective implementation of project activities to meet the targets by the fourth year which is the final year of the project.

All three country teams have achieved quite significant progress when it comes to specific activities in Policy and Practice, Partnership and Engagement, and Capacity Building whereas the participants agreed on the need of scaling up the achievements and showcase them by multiple reports, publications, success stories, videos among other sources of outreach materials to reach out to more stakeholders as possible.

 The annual meeting provided us with an opportunity to reflect back, rejoice and gear up to achieve targeted results originally intended by ALIGN project.