The State of Europe's Common Birds 2008 - European Bird Census ...

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The State of Europe’s Common Birds 2008Photo by T. Pospíšil (birdphoto.cz)Figure 12 | Regional trends of the Mallard Anasplatyrhynchos in Europe. Countries contributingtheir data are grouped as follows: North Europe:Norway; West Europe: Belgium, Denmark, formerWest Germany, Netherlands; South Europe: France;Central and East Europe: Czech Republic, Estonia,former East Germany, Hungary, Poland.[The sudden decline of the index in South Europeanregion at the beginning of the time period most likelyreflects insufficient data rather than real decline.]The long-term trend of the Mallard Anasplatyrhynchos has shown a moderate increase,but since 1985 the species has remained stable.The increase is more prominent in western andnorthern Europe, while the southern and easternEuropean population appears to be stable(see Figure 12). The increase of the Europeanpopulation may be caused partially by releases ofhand-reared birds for hunting. The common andwidespread nature of this species means that it isone of the few waterfowl whose abundance canbe assessed using common breeding birdmonitoring scheme methods. The informationthat this provides about the breeding populationcan be compared to other programmes, such asthe International Waterbird Census, whichmonitors the wintering population.18
The State of Europe’s Common Birds 2008Use of common birdmonitoring data forpolicy and scienceThe interaction and cooperation betweenscientists and policy makers has been a criticalfeature in the successful development andadoption of the wild bird indicators in Europe.This interaction has helped the PECBMS todevelop summary statistics and information thatspecifically target and understand the policyneeds. Thanks to this, the wild bird indicatorshave been promoted for official use in a numberof different reporting processes in Europe.The Farmland Bird Index (FBI) has beenadopted by the EU as an Indicator of SustainableDevelopment and a Structural Indicator (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat). Furthermore, the FBI,produced in accordance with the methodologydeveloped by the PECBMS, has been adopted asan indicator for the EU Rural DevelopmentPlans under the Council Regulation (EC) No.1698/2005 (http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rurdev/eval/index_en.htm). Indicators underthe framework of the Structural and SustainableDevelopment Indicators are routinely producedby the PECBMS at a national level using a singleEuropean species’ habitat classification, butnational versions of the indicators that use theirown species’ classifications are in common usefor good reasons. The European-scale speciesclassifications allow meaningful comparisons ofindicators across countries, so-called‘benchmarking’, while national-scale species’classifications may be able to capture importantelements of the local environment withinnational wild bird indicators. National versionsof the FBI used in Rural Development Plans, forexample, can use country-specific species’habitat classifications, and due to this theThe Redshank Tringa totanus hasshown a moderate decline since 1980.The loss and fragmentation of itshabitat due to agriculture practices isbelieved to be a key factor in itsdecline. This wet grassland speciestend to nest in small patches ofrelatively tall vegetation which arelikely to be uncommon on the shortand uniform sward that ischaracteristic of heavily grazedsaltmarshes (Norris et al. 1998).Habitat fragmentation concentratesbreeding birds into smaller areas,where they are less effective at drivingaway predators. This effect may becompounded by a parallel increase inthe populations of crows and foxes. Itis therefore likely that these factors areaffecting the breeding productivity ofRedshank as well as other waders(Stanbury et al. 2000). However, theprecise numbers of breeding birds arerather difficult to obtain due to the lowterritoriality of the species.Photo by P. Šaj (birdphoto.cz)19
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