The third report was prepared by the technical secretariat of the Commission on Biological Diversity supported by a group of 5 national consultants. These 5 national consultants worked under the supervision of the Technical Committee in charge of coordinating the preparation of the said report. An exchange workshop on the framework for preparing this report was previously organized from 12 to 16 March 2005 in order to have a common understanding. In this context, the core documents selected included, among others, the outline of the report provided by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, documents relating to the Convention, the second national report, national documents related to Biological Diversity and the reports of the conferences of the parties. The consultants collected information from institutions involved in implementation and concerned with biological diversity, in particular national technical departments, research institutions, Abdou Moumouni University, UNDP, NGOs and associations, etc. The document produced was first examined by the technical secretariat of the commission on biological diversity before being submitted to a validation workshop bringing together members of the Technical Commission on Biological Diversity (composed by the representatives of the Technical Commission on Biological Diversity). Of l administration (and civil society) and resource persons