RapportAn assessment of innovations to improve the monitoring of waterbirds and their habitat along the East Atlantic Flyway

Coastal waterbirds and the wetlands they inhabit are an essential component of worldwide biodiversity. Across the globe, migratory waterbirds share a few, general routes between breeding grounds and non-breeding grounds encompassing general global flyways across continents. An important flyway between Europe and Africa, used by millions of waterbirds, is the East Atlantic Flyway, which coarsely connects the Arctic region between NE Canada and Siberian Russia with the European and African west coast. Many international treaties and conventions are targeting the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems. To ensure an early detection of worrisome population trends of waterbird species and define important sites for these species, national governments and site managers need reliable monitoring data. Clearly, for appropriate decisions about potential conservation measures information about population trends and sizes is essential. After the designation of the Wadden Sea as a World Heritage site in 2009, the Wadden Sea Flyway Initiative (WSFI) was established in 2012, which initiated an integrated monitoring programme of coastal waterbirds in 2013 together with Wetlands International and BirdLife International. The goals of this integrated monitoring programme along the East Atlantic Flyway are to (1) estimate the size and distribution of flyway populations and to detect trends herein (abundance monitoring), (2) gain insight into the causes that explain changes in waterbird numbers and distribution, i.e. through monitoring of reproduction and survival (vital rate monitoring), and (3) assess pressures at sites along the flyway (environmental monitoring).