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EURING Newsletter - Volume 1, November 1996 FOREWORD Dear Colleagues and friends, The need for a newsletter has been long discussed within EURING,
and this first issue comes after a further delay due to many problems
in assembling the material. But here we are at last, and that's
good anyway! Scientific bird ringing is at a crucial point; within the framework of an increasing international awareness of the need for sound scientific data for the proper enforcement of the different existing political instruments (e.g. EU Directives) for the conservation of natural resources, we have the opportunity to offer the results of a unique long-term research activity carried on at the continental scale by European ringers within EURING. We have possibly underestimated so far the value of the data we gathered (both as recoveries at the EURING Data Bank, or as ringing data by the different schemes); yet, the EDB in itself is a unique case of a huge data set offered for analysis of both basic science and applied issues, while the even much larger amounts of data collected from ringed birds provide information on crucial aspects for international conservation and management policies, such as networks of staging and wintering sites, flyways, zoogeographical data, physical conditions of migrants, demographic parameters of breeding populations. It is high time now to provide such information to the relevant international organisations, and for this purpose we need to start getting fully involved also in trying to obtain proper funds for improving data management and analysis. Meanwhile, the international economic situation causes several schemes to suffer from financial cuts, affecting the ongoing ringing activities as badly as to even put at risk the existence of these centres. All efforts are therefore needed now also from this respect, if we really want to maintain EURING as a really continental organism. In the meantime, we also have to evolve and further improve our capabilities of properly collecting data by means of standardised and calibrated methods. From this respect, planning large-scale projects clearly addressed to scientific and applied problems could be a very powerful strategy for EURING. Examples like the ESF Network project are a demonstration of the possibility of spreading properly verified field methods, to build up homogeneous data sets which can then be more easily analysed to clarify different aspects of the biology and status of European bird populations. From this respect, the results EURING has already obtained through its Technical meetings of having statisticians and ornithologists working together to produce models for the calculation of demographic parameters offer a powerful tool to set up suitable project plans. EURING being a large community of professional ornithologists, amateurs and data managers, we have many different aspects to take into account and problems to solve; from this respect, all EURING members should try and offer their contribution to the further improvements of our activities. I hope this newsletter will be the instrument for everybody to get in contact with all our colleagues, making suggestions, proposing developments, spreading news for the benefit of EURING and hence of our European birds. Fernando Spina
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