A recent paper published in Ornis Fennica (Heldbjerg et al. 2019) showed that positive population trends of Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) in Central-East Europe contrast with negative trends in North and West Europe. The study, which included common bird monitoring data from 24 European countries and involved no less than 34 co-authors, provides an example of how useful the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) and all the included national monitoring schemes within this collaboration are.
We are very proud to announce that Petr Voříšek, the long-standing PECBMS coordinator, was awarded the BTO Marsh Award for International Ornithology and the EuroBirdPortal team is this year´s winner of the BTO Marsh Award for Innovative Ornithology.
Recent research published online on October 9th, 2019 in Climate Change examined the strength of the relationship between species-specific regional population changes and climate suitability trends, using 30-year datasets of population change for 525 breeding bird species in Europe and the USA. The data for European species were obtained from PECBMS.
In a science blog post Prof. Richard Gregory, Head of Species Monitoring and Research, RSPB Centre for Conservation Science and Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, University College London, discusses recently published research by Juan Traba and Manuel B. Morales in Scientific Reports on the decline of steppe bird species and the loss of fallow land due to agriculture intensification.
This report summarizes the activities of the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) between January 2019 and June 2019 under the European Commission grant “Towards the new generation of Wild Birds Indicators”.
On 11–12th March, a mini-workshop dedicated to wild bird indicators took place in Solsona, Spain. The Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) hosted more than 20 experts in bird monitoring thanks kind invitation from Lluís Brotons.
In March we have produced a new leaflet presenting the trends of 170 common European bird species based on data from 28 countries covering 37 years (1980–2016). The leaflet summarises outputs of this 2018 data update and presents a nice example of the use of bird monitoring and atlasing in species conservation. PECBMS and EBBA2 data on the European Turtle-dove helped to identify Priority Intervention Areas for this species.
The 21st Conference of the European Bird Census Council (EBCC) called Bird Numbers 2019 ‘Counting birds counts’ will take place in Évora, Portugal on 8-13 April 2019. You are welcome to attend the conference as well as the PECBMS workshop. The programme is already available online and you may download the agenda of the workshop, too.
European common bird indicators produced by the PECBMS were used in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) report: The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture.
