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Bird Ringing for Science and Conservation
Bird Ringing in the 21st Century and
the Future Role of EURING
EURING promotes research based on bird-marking
in order to inform the conservation and scientific understanding
of wild birds. Co-ordinated field projects and novel analyses of
large-scale data will address key topics including the effects of
climate change and factors responsible for the loss of biodiversity.
Throughout the Palearctic-African flyway, changing
agricultural practices and land use continue to have major impacts
on our bird populations. Global climate change is already affecting
the phenology, distributions and migrations of many bird species,
and is set to have much greater effects over the coming decades.
The conservation of many migratory bird populations also requires
the protection of site networks and other suitable habitat along
flyways under international treaties such as the Ramsar Convention,
Bonn Convention and African Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA).
To address these large-scale conservation issues
we need knowledge of population dynamics and migration patterns
provided by internationally coordinated bird marking. The examples
throughout this brochure illustrate what has already been achieved
as well as the urgent need for further research. EURING and its
member schemes undertake research into factors affecting European
birds throughout the Palearctic-African flyway, where appropriate
in collaboration with colleagues from outside Europe. EURING will
focus its future activities on three key areas in order to maximize
the contribution of bird-marking to science and conservation. These
are technical development and co-operation, the analysis and interpretation
of large-scale data sets and the development of co-ordinated research
programmes.
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Colour-ringed
Stone-curlew
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Common standards for field work, data storage and analysis
are essential for high quality international research. EURING
promotes best-practice in field protocols for the catching
and examination of wild birds and in the training of ringers.
We have a multi-language website for recovery reporting, and
have developed the use of a common European web address on
bird rings. Data from conventional bird-ringing can be enhanced
by additional techniques including colour-marking, transponders,
radio-tracking and satellite tracking. EURING will work to
ensure that the most appropriate technologies are applied
to address specific research questions. EURING will also maintain
a series of conferences that promote collaboration between
statisticians and biologists, leading to methods and software
that provide better insights into migration patterns and the
causes of population changes.
Maintaining and developing the EURING Data
Bank as a unified source of European ringing and recovery
data is central to EURING’s activities. EURING provides
research and interpretive services based on these data and
also welcomes requests for data and collaboration from other
prospective analysts. EURING will also aim to ensure that
this primary research is turned into advice that is of real
value to policy makers and conservation practitioners. This
could be achieved by, for example, providing on-line access
to summary information on movement patterns and demography.
The organization of co-operative bird-marking projects is
expected to form a growing part of EURING’s activities.
The EURING Swallow project is a recent and highly successful
example of this approach (page 14). The European Constant
Effort Sites (CES) scheme that is currently under development
aims to monitor the abundance, productivity and survival of
a range of species by standardized mist-netting (page 17).
CES schemes offer the opportunity to address a range of important
conservation issues such as the effects of climate change
on population dynamics. The large network of volunteer ringers
maintained by EURING’s member schemes offers the potential
for other coordinated projects to address key conservation
issues.
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