Saving wetlands for wildlife & people
Saving wetlands for wildlife & people
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Effective conservation requires a sound understanding of the status of all taxa or populations. A range of criteria are used to assess conservation status, and among these are the abundance, range size and population trend. It is therefore important to make accurate and regular assessments of these parameters in order that the resulting assessment of conservation status is also as accurate as possible. In order to explain the observed changes in abundance and distribution, it is necessary to measure other demographic parameters, the most important of which are productivity (annual reproductive success) and survival (or mortality) rates. The principal reasons for doing so are two-fold. Firstly, understanding the demographic causes of a decline in abundance provides an opportunity to more effectively target conservation action (for example, if a decline is known to be caused by poor productivity, rather than poor over-winter survival, conservation action can be targeted on the breeding areas rather than the wintering grounds). Secondly, by measuring these additional demographic parameters, we may be able to detect changes likely to lead to a reduction in abundance before this actually takes place, giving advance warning of potential problems and the opportunity to put conservation measures in place before declines become more serious. WWT’s Integrated Waterbird Monitoring Programme aims to monitor the numbers, productivity, survival, distribution, migration and health of UK waterbirds. For effective delivery, the Integrated Waterbird Monitoring Programme is divided into a number of smaller programmes: currently the Goose & Swan Monitoring Programme and a suite of other surveys and monitoring initiatives. All of these programmes and surveys employ two basic methods to collect data: direct field observations and capture-mark-recapture. The applicability of these varies according to a range of factors, such as the species, habitat, or time of year. |
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