Ornithologists have published a new version of the European Bird Indicators today, showing that we have lost 19% of common bird species since 1980. Particularly alarming is the 61% decline in farmland birds, which are disappearing from the European landscape due to intensification in agriculture. One of the hopes that bird populations will be able to recover in the future is the forthcoming EU Nature restoration regulation.
Since 2022, we do our best to collect data with only one-year delay. We are grateful to all the national coordinators for their effort to deliver their data up to 2022 for the 2023 update.
The Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) presents a set of updated European common bird indicators covering the period of 1980–2022. The outputs based on the data for 168 common bird species come from 30 countries. We thank all the national coordinators for their efforts to cope with the new programs and the thousands of volunteers counting birds in the field.
This report presents updated population trends and indices of 170 common European bird species for the period 1980–2022 produced by the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) in 2023. The species trends presented are for an extended period (from 1980 onwards until 2021) and the last ten years (2013–2022).
The project funded by Horizon Europe (HORIZON-CL6-2023-BIODIV-01) aims to gain crucial insights into the conservation of breeding, stopover and non-breeding habitats of 14 species of huntable birds in Europe. Many of these species are facing steep declines in numbers, emphasising the urgency for understanding their habitat requirements in terms of quality and quantity. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide decision-makers and managers with robust recommendations to effectively manage and restore these habitats, and thus ensure the favourable conservation status and sustainable management of these species.
In 2023, despite the difficult wartime conditions, the first surveys for the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme implemented by the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) were done in Ukraine. As the primary method, passive acoustic monitoring was used due to the lack of ornithologists and volunteers on the sites. That became possible only due to the help of WildLife Acoustics, Catalan Ornithological Institute and the Czech Society for Ornithology – as a donation, 16 acoustic recorders SM micro were provided to make surveys on the territory of Ukrainian Polesia and Carpathians.
The annual results of the Dutch Breeding Bird monitoring coordinated by Sovon (Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology) were published in late July. This report presents an overview of the breeding population trends of 199 species, both common, rare and colonial breeding birds, in The Netherlands up to and including 2022.
We would like to draw your attention to the International Conference "Migratory and Resident Birds in a Changing Climate", which will take place on 28–29 September 2023 at the Brandenburg Academy "Schloss Criewen" (Federal State of Brandenburg, Eastern Germany) and cordially invite you as a speaker or participant.
