Birds in the European Union - BirdLife International

■ METHODOLOGY
GEOGRAPHICAL SCOPE
The geographical scope of this assessment is the European
territory of the 25 Member States of the European Union as of
May 2004, including the Azores, Madeira and the Canary
Islands (hereafter “EU25”). In several of the analyses, some
other country groups are mentioned: “EU15” (EU Member
States before 1 May 2004), “AC10” (countries that acceded to
the EU on 1 May 2004) and “non-EU25” (countries beyond
the EU25 borders)—see Figure 1.
DATA COLLECTION
To assess the Conservation Status of birds in the European
Union, it was necessary to obtain updated population
information on all species from every country. This was
achieved in the framework of a larger project (Birds in Europe,
BirdLife International 2004a, hereafter “BiE2”) to update the
publication Birds in Europe (Tucker and Heath 1994, hereafter
“BiE1”). It involved a continent-wide network of national
coordinators (all of whom are listed in BiE2), and collaboration
from many relevant experts, monitoring organisations, regional
contributors and volunteers.
For all wild bird species occurring naturally and regularly in
the European Union, the following data were collected from each
country:
2
Breeding population size (in or around the year 2000).
Breeding population trend (over the period 1990–2000).
Where available, equivalent midwinter population data were
also collected, mainly for species covered by the International
Waterbird Census run by Wetlands International. For waders,
many data were effectively collected in parallel with those
provided for the International Wader Study Group projects,
Breeding waders in Europe 2000 (Thorup et al. in press) and
Status of migratory wader populations in Africa and Western
Eurasia in the 1990s (Stroud et al. 2004).
Wherever possible, national coordinators supplied
population trend data as actual percentage change figures over
the 1990–2000 period. For a number of widespread common
species, particularly detailed information was supplied by
countries participating in the Pan-European Common Bird
Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS), run by the European Bird
Census Council (EBCC, www.ebcc.info) and BirdLife
International. For species and countries not covered by
PECBMS, national coordinators supplied data on trend
direction and magnitude using a fixed set of categories and
codes (Table 1). Trend categories ranged from -5 to 5, with the
sign indicating the direction of the change. Stable populations
were represented by a value of zero. There were thus 11
population trend categories, plus special codes for fluctuating
trends, new breeders and extinct species.
Figure 1. The European Union with its first 15 Member States (EU15) and its new Members (AC10) who have acceded on
1 May 2004.
AC10
EU15
Non-EU25
Non-Europe
Austria (1), Belgium (2),
Cyprus (3), Czech Republic (4),
Denmark (5), Estonia (6),
Finland (7), France (8),
Germany (9), Greece (10),
Hungary (11), Ireland (12),
Italy (13), Latvia (14),
Lithuania (15), Luxembourg (16),
Malta (17), Netherlands (18),
Poland (19), Portugal (20),
Slovakia (21), Slovenia (22),
Spain (23), Sweden (24),
United Kingdom (25)
20
12
23
25
18
8
5
9
16
13
24
1
4
22
17
19
21
11
7
6
14
15
10
3
3