East Atlantic Flyway Assessment 2017. The status of coastal waterbird populations and their sites

The ‘total count’ of the coastal East Atlantic Flyway in January 2017 was carried out in 33 countries of which 11 in Europe and 22 in Africa, and involved about 1,500 observers (1,100 in Europe, 400 in Africa). In each country, national coordinators organized a network of observers and collated information on bird numbers and environmental conditions. The latter largely followed a system developed by BirdLife International for their Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBA) programme. In addition to funding (often from governments) to carry out the national monitoring programmes, funding for international coordination, reporting and additional support to some countries was received from the ‘Programma Rijke Waddenzee’ in The Netherlands. Substantial co-funding was also received from the MAVA foundation, Vogelbescherming Nederland, World Wildlife Fund in The Netherlands, National Wadden Sea parks in Germany, Wetlands International, BirdLife International and WEBS in the UK.

The results of the 2017 ‘total count’ are reported in several chapters and annexes in this report. The basic monitoring results can be found in the annexes; results per bird species in Annex 1 and results of monitoring environmental conditions, pressures and conservation measures in Annex 2. In the chapters of the main text, the results are analysed for patterns and conclusions are formulated concerning the status and trends of waterbirds in the coastal East Atlantic Flyway as a whole (chapter 2), trends in bird numbers in the Wadden Sea in relation to developments at the flyway scale (chapter 3), and the assessment of main pressures and conservation measures (chapter 4).