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.
Biodiversity is exposed to increasing pressure by climate and land use changes. But how species respond to these pressures and which is more dominant remain controversial questions. A recent collaborative study including 28 European countries assesses, for the first time, how 170 bird species have responded to major human-induced pressures at a continental scale.
On Friday, 10 February, the third PECBMS webinar took place on Zoom. Since the new data request is nearing, we organised the webinar on RTRIM-shell and related topics. We guided the national coordinators from the data preparation to data validation in the online tool. Later, Anna Gamero introduced the site-level data online tool, which is available to all the coordinators to manage their site-level data. Furthermore, Sergi Herrando ( ICO, CREAF) introduced the new EBBA Live project.
This year, Moldova joins the International Census Plots initiative. Silvia Ursul, the scheme coordinator, summarises the country's pilot season of bird monitoring in ten plots surveyed by nine volunteers.
