The annual publication “The State of Birds in Switzerland” (in English, French, German, and Italian) summarises the results of our various monitoring projects, conducted with the support of more than 2000 volunteers in all parts of the country.
A study on farmland bird populations in Germany was published in Bird Conservation International. The authors explored potential causes for bird population changes based on data from standardised German breeding bird monitoring schemes.
The latest report from the BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey is published, presenting results from 2019, and also long-term trends for 117 species. Volunteers visit randomly selected 1-km squares twice in the breeding season to gather these important data.
Across Europe, we are facing an unprecedented and challenging situation brought upon us by Covid-19, and the restrictions imposed upon normal life in response to the pandemic. At this time we, the European Bird Census Council, want to express our support to our community of birdwatchers, ornithologists, scientists, and conservationists across the continent.
The European Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (eBMS) was started in 2014 by Butterfly Conservation Europe and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. In December 2018 the eBMS was supported by a contract from the EU for a new project Assessing ButterfLies in Europe (ABLE).
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.