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The Asian Waterbird Census (AWC) documents waterbird populations and trends across Asia from 1987 to 2007, relying on a network of volunteers. The census highlights significant declines in waterbird numbers, particularly due to habitat reclamation, while facing threats from climate change and human development. The data underscores the urgent need for conservation and policy actions to protect wetlands and their biodiversity.
The Asia-Pacific Migratory Waterbird Conservation Strategy is an international cooperative initiative for the conservation of migratory waterbirds and wetlands, involving governments, conventions, NGOs and local people. Launched in 1996, the Strategy is coordinated by a free-standing international committee, comprising representatives of governments, the Ramsar Convention, CMS, UNDP/GEF, UNEP, NGOs and technical experts. The Strategy provides a framework for the development and implementation of action plans for migratory waterbird species (Anatidae, cranes and shorebirds) in the East Asian-Australasian region, and through it, networks of internationally important sites have been developed. These networks serve as a focus for site-based conservation efforts, including networking, training, awareness raising, research and sound management of wetlands, through international cooperation and resource mobilization. Based on the successes during the period 1996-2000, the Strategy was rene...
Strategies for Conserving Migratory Waterbirds – Proceedings of Workshop 2 of the 2nd International Conference Proceedings of Workshop 2 on Wetlands and Development held in Dakar, Senegal, 8–14 November 1998. Wetlands International Publication No. 55, Wageningen, The Netherlands, vi + 71 pp., 1999
Conservation of migratory waterbirds provides a challenge in a region as vast as the Asia-Pacific – with its great diversity in species, habitats, peoples and cultures, threats and potential solutions. To draw attention to conservation priorities at a regional and flyway level, the Asia-Pacific Migratory Waterbird Conservation Strategy: 1996–2000 has been developed through a process of extensive and intensive international consultation and debate. The Strategy covers seven broad, overlapping themes: Conservation of Species; Conservation of Habitats; Research and Monitoring; Education; Information and Awareness; Training; and Policy and Legislation. Initiatives to address these themes include the development of action plans for three species groups (shorebirds, cranes, and Anatidae), through the establishment of networks of sites of importance for shorebirds and cranes (to be established for Anatidae in 1999), training and public information, and awareness plans. The work is promoted by Wetlands International in close collaboration with, and support from wetland/species conservation conventions, governments, NGOs and experts. This paper summarises the philosophy adopted in developing the Strategy, achievements to date, proposed activities and an outline of a vision for the future.
2000
• In the entire AEWA region, estimates are now available for 98% of the 522 waterbird populations covered by the Agreement. This is satisfactory, but the quality of many of the estimates remains low. Population trend estimates (whether decreasing, stable or increasing) are now available for 71% of these populations.
2009
Finally I am very grateful to the Keidanren Nature Conservation Fund for their timely support for the production of this report and regional AWC activities over recent years.
Biological Conservation
2014; Brochet et al., 2016), they require international cooperation to ensure their conservation across breeding and wintering distribution ranges (AEWA, 2015). Accordingly, they are one of the first taxonomic groups to have benefitted from the two main international conservation policies implemented in the western Palearctic: the European Union's Wild Birds Directive (BD, 79/409/EEC) and the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, or Bern Convention (BC, 19.IX.1979). However, the effect of these policies on waterbird community adjustment to temperature increase remains undervalued (Pearce-Higgins et al., 2014). Here, we examine the ability of waterbird communities wintering in the Mediterranean to adjust their species composition to temperature increase depending on the implementation of two international conservation policies, the Birds Directive and the Bern Convention. We use data on 145 species from the WI dataset, surveyed across 22 years and 2786 sites distributed within 22 countries with varying uptake of BD and BC conservation policies, for about 100 million birds counted. Using the Community Temperature Index (CTI, Devictor et al., 2008), we measure the thermic adjustment of waterbird communities to the increase of winter temperatures for each country, for groups of countries that are (i) Member States of the European Union, enforcing the BD, (ii) and/or Contracting Parties to the BC, (iii) or neither (hereafter "BD-BC", "BC", "No-BD No-BC"), (iv) and for the entire Mediterranean basin. We test whether the contribution of strictly and not strictly protected species to the CTI trends differs depending on their protection status. We hypothesize that i) CTI trends have increased inside, but not outside, the Member States of the EU (BD) and Contracting Parties to the BC, ii) strictly protected species have contributed more to the CTI increase than not strictly protected species, and iii) this difference in contribution disappears in the countries which are not Member States of the EU or not Contracting Parties to the BC. 2. Material and methods 2.1. Waterbird monitoring data Waterbird counts were performed as part of the International Waterbird Census (IWC), coordinated by Wetlands International (www. wetlands.org). Each year thousands of wetlands are monitored in January, providing one count event per site per year (Delany, 2005). We used data collected between 1991 and 2012 as they cover the whole waterbird community, not only Anatidae as during earlier periods. We focused on sites (wintering waterbird communities) located around the Mediterranean basin (30°N; 45°N; 10°W; 40°E; IPCC, 2014), distributed across 22 countries (Fig. 1). We retained only sites with at least two count events across the 22-year period. We then selected waterbird species as defined by the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA, http://www.unep-aewa.org), totalling 145 species. Considering recent taxonomic changes and their complicated specific identification, Larus michahellis, L. cachinnans, L. armenicus and L. argentatus were all lumped into one 'species'. A total of 2786 sites have been retained, totalling 25,722 count events and 98.9 million birds.
Oryx, 2021
South-east Asia's diverse coastal wetlands, which span natural mudflats and mangroves to man-made salt pans, offer critical habitat for many migratory waterbird species in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway. Species dependent on these wetlands include nearly the entire population of the Critically Endangered spoon-billed sandpiper Calidris pygmaea and the Endangered spotted greenshank Tringa guttifer, and significant populations of several other globally threatened and declining species. Presently, more than 50 coastal Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) in the region (7.4% of all South-east Asian IBAs) support at least one threatened migratory species. However, recent studies continue to reveal major knowledge gaps on the distribution of migratory waterbirds and important wetland sites along South-east Asia's vast coastline, including undiscovered and potential IBAs. Alongside this, there are critical gaps in the representation of coastal wetlands across the protec...
Nature, 2017
Understanding global patterns of biodiversity change is crucial for conservation research, policies and practices. However, for most ecosystems, the lack of systematically collected data at a global level limits our understanding of biodiversity changes and their local-scale drivers. Here we address this challenge by focusing on wetlands, which are among the most biodiverse and productive of any environments and which provide essential ecosystem services, but are also amongst the most seriously threatened ecosystems. Using birds as an indicator taxon of wetland biodiversity, we model time-series abundance data for 461 waterbird species at 25,769 survey sites across the globe. We show that the strongest predictor of changes in waterbird abundance, and of conservation efforts having beneficial effects, is the effective governance of a country. In areas in which governance is on average less effective, such as western and central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America, waterbird de...
Realistic population size estimates for waterbirds are crucial for the application of wetland conservation strategies, since the identification of internationally important wetlands is based on local numbers relative to the population size of the respective species. Central Asia is a poorly surveyed region that is situated at the intersection of migration routes that lead waterbirds from Western Siberia to the south-west (South-West Asia, East Africa) and to the south-east (South Asia, India). We calculated waterbird population estimates for the Tengiz-Korgalzhyn region, a large wetland complex in the steppe zone of Central Kazakhstan, based on waterbird surveys conducted between 1999 and 2004. For 20 of 43 species analysed the region supported more than 5% of the relevant flyway populations. Five species occurred with more than 40% of the flyway totals, including the Endangered White-headed Duck Oxyura leucocephala and the Vulnerable Dalmatian Pelican Pelecanus crispus. Peak numbers were recorded in summer and autumn and for most species numbers were more than an order of magnitude lower on spring migration compared with autumn migration. We identified 72 individual sites that held more than 20,000 waterbirds or more than 1% of a particular flyway population at least once. These sites are likely to constitute priorities for conservation. The general conservation status of the region is favourable, since many of the important sites are located within a strict nature reserve. However, outside the reserve hunting, fishing and powerline casualties represent conservation issues that should be monitored more carefully in the future.
2021
This special issue of Wildfowl has summarised our knowledge of the biogeographical populations of ten key Anatidae species in East Asia, their current and recent estimated abundance and distributions, their migration routes and movements, and sites of importance to these populations at key stages of their annual cycles. The analysis was possible only through the active cooperation of the many biologists and site managers involved in studies of these species in different countries participating in a collaborative programme of monitoring, research and analysis. Development of new telemetry and bio-logging technology has played a key role in our ability to describe linkages between the breeding, moulting, staging and wintering areas used by individual waterbirds. Compilation of movement data recorded for tracked individuals of each species has provided initial information on flyway delineation and range definition, which forms the basis for future identification of biogeographical popu...
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