Black-browed Albatross showing strong signs of recovery on Falklands

Good news for Black-browed Albatross - Courtesy of Birdlife

July 2012. A new report indicates a healthy increase in the numbers of Black-browed Albatrosses breeding in the Falkland Islands. The report, submitted to the Environment Committee of the Falkland Islands Government, indicated that recent and historical survey results show an increase in this threatened species.

Endangered 
Black-browed Albatross is currently classified as Endangered by BirdLife on behalf of the IUCN Red List. Over two-thirds of the global population breed in the Falkland Islands, so the status of the Falklands population has significant bearing on the global conservation status of the species.

Within the Falkland Islands different methods have been used independently to census the Black-browed Albatross population. Ian, and more recently, Georgina Strange have conducted aerial photographic surveys of colonies in the Falkland Islands since 1964, with archipelago-wide surveys in 1986, 2005 and 2010. Members of Falklands Conservation have carried out ground and boat-based surveys of the Falklands population in 2000, 2005 and 2010.

Up until and including the 2005 census results, these initiatives reported contrasting population trends. The aerial based surveys indicated an increase in the population between the mid 1980s and 2005 and the ground based surveys a decline between 1995 and 2005.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/black-browed.html

New reserves to protect 100 ha of threatened Caribbean forest on Dominican Republic

Birdlife partner secures 100 hectares

July 2012. Grupo Jaragua (BirdLife in the Dominican Republic) has purchased a 100 hectare corridor of transitional, previously unprotected and highly threatened forest within the Jaragua-Bahoruco-Enriquillo Biosphere Reserve. The initiative, a first in terms of land purchase for Grupo Jaragua, is an important step towards halting the conversion of Caribbean forest with high conservation value to low yield cattle or crop farming.

The Jaragua-Bahoruco-Enriquillo Biosphere Reserve is located in the south-west of the Dominican Republic, connecting lowland dry forest at sea level in the Barahona Peninsula (Jaragua National Park IBA) to tropical montane forest in the highlands of Sierra de Bahoruco IBA. These forests are located outside the country's current protected area network and are vital for the maintenance of habitat connectivity to ensure the survival of ecologically-isolated species populations. They also provide an important buffer against the additional stress that climate change is likely to place on the protected areas.

More than 40 globally threatened species
This region holds more than 40 globally threatened species including birds such as Black-capped Petrel, Bay-breasted, La Selle Thrush, Hispaniolan Crossbill, Hispaniolan Amazon and Parakeet. Moreover, the area is home to six Critically Endangered frogs, Hispaniola's only extant endemic land mammals - the Endangered Hispaniolan Solenodon and Hutia, and the Vulnerable Rhinoceros Rock Iguana.

Since 2010, as part of BirdLife's global Forests of Hope programme, Grupo Jaragua has been working to protect forest corridors and create private reserves. Grupo Jaragua's local knowledge, experience and emphasis on the involvement of local communities in protected area management have made their first land purchase initiative a great success.

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/dom-rep.html#cr

2.8 million birds trapped in Cyprus in 2011 – Highest ever

Trappers ignoring rules
May 2012. BirdLife Cyprus has completed another year of monitoring of illegal bird trapping as part of its on-going anti-trapping campaign, with the overall picture revealing the magnitude of an ecological disaster. BirdLife undertook surveillance during spring, autumn and winter 2011 and the estimated death toll sums up to the shocking figure of 2.8 million birds, the highest estimate since year-round monitoring began five years ago. 

Trappers are no longer concerned with prosecution
BirdLife Cyprus has just finalized its winter trapping report for 2011. Trapping levels were similar to the previous winter season, with a small decrease of 8% in trapping activity recorded in winter 2011 compared to winter 2010. A total of 616 metres of active net rides were recorded during winter 2011, suggesting that over 400,000 wintering birds could have been caught in mist nets across the whole of Cyprus. An alarming number of mist nets in situ was recorded this winter, an increase of 300% compared to winter 2010, a clear indication that trappers are no longer concerned by the threat of prosecution.

Bird trapping is completely out of control"
‘Although these numbers are an estimate, they show that illegal bird trapping activity is getting completely out of control", said Dr Clairie Papazoglou, Executive Director of BirdLife Cyprus. "We have been recording a dramatic increase in trapping activity in the last few years. Too many people are still supporting this indiscriminate slaughter by eating ambelopoulia. People need to take on board what the ecological impact of eating ambelopoulia is and to stop demanding the illegal bird delicacies'" said Papazoglou.

"Also, the competent authorities need to re-double their efforts, implementing a strict ‘zero tolerance' approach across the entire bird crime chain, from the trapping sites to the restaurants offering birds", continued Papazoglou.

Targeting migratory birds
Illegal bird trappers are after migratory birds passing through Cyprus during spring and autumn or after wintering birds, mainly song thrushes (Turdus philomelos), during the winter season. The non-selectivity of mist nets and limesticks means that the catch is indiscriminate, with over 100 bird species recorded trapped, many of them considered rare and threatened. And as the death estimate suggests, bird trapping is nowadays extensive, run at an ‘industrial' level with huge profits to be made from selling the trapped birds to restaurants and for domestic consumption.

The ‘Larnaca Declaration'
The record annual death toll estimate of 2011 can only suggest that the ‘zero tolerance' approach that was pledged by all participants, including competent authorities, at the first Europe-wide conference on illegal killing of birds in Larnaca (Cyprus) in July (2011), has not materialized. The ‘Larnaca Declaration' and its recommendations outline the key tools to tackle this persistent illegality, including strengthening of enforcement and the development of a public awareness campaign. BirdLife Cyprus calls on the authorities to adopt the recommendations of the ‘Larnaca Declaration' and to draw up targeted action plans to stop illegal bird trapping.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/cyprus-burd-trap.html

World’s 10,000 most important bird areas mapped out

Practical tool for conservation

November 2010: BirdLife has published a map showing the location of more than 10,000 of the world's most important sites for birds and biodiversity, and their protection status. The map, to be presented for the first time at COP-10 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, shows the global network of Important Bird Areas (IBAs) identified by the BirdLife Partnership.

Although chosen using standardised scientific criteria based on the distribution of key bird species, IBAs have also been shown to be important for other animals and plants. For example, the 30 Ugandan IBAs, covering only eight per cent of the land surface, hold 74 per cent of Uganda's 1,247 recorded butterfly species, and 82 per cent of those endemic to the country or the Albertine Rift region.


Efforts can be concentrated where they'll be most effective
IBAs have been recognised worldwide as practical tools for conservation, enabling efforts to be concentrated where they will be most effective. For example, with the publication of this new global map of IBAs, BirdLife is exposing the gaps in the world's network of protected areas. While some 59 per cent of the sites are shown in dark green, indicating that they are wholly or partially protected, the remaining sites are shown in light green, indicating that they lack any form of protection or, in some cases, that their protection status is unknown.

Such information is pertinent to the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas (POWPA) whereby every country has agreed to conduct a gap analysis of its protected areas network. To help with this, BirdLife has made its information on the protection status of IBAs available to governments and a number of countries are already using their national IBA inventories to help guide the expansion their protected area networks. Despite recent progress in declaring new protected the protection status of IBAs worldwide shows that only 26 per cent of IBAs are currently fully legally protected.

Conservation needs support of local people
Wherever possible, IBAs are identified and documented through a process led by BirdLife's national partners. This ensures that the best local knowledge feeds into the process, and builds engagement and capacity for later IBA conservation and monitoring work. By mid-2010, 126 national IBA inventories had been published, in a variety of languages, together with five continental directories. The extensive datasets are managed globally in BirdLife's World Bird Database, and much of the information is made available to everyone through BirdLife's website.

BirdLife recognises that successful conservation needs the wholehearted support of local people. Since the late 1990s, BirdLife has been nurturing and networking grassroots groups at IBAs, working with communities to develop site-specific solutions that combine conservation with sustainable livelihoods.

IBAs across the world are monitored using BirdLife's standardised and simple methods for scoring their condition (based on the key species and habitats within them), the pressures (threats) impacting upon them, and the conservation responses in place (such as action plans and management activities). Such monitoring, carried out by local groups, volunteers, government staff and BirdLife Partners, generates data for IBA indices that provide powerful tools for quantifying conservation efforts and measuring their impact.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/bird-conservation.html

Wetland wonderland breeds birds' paradise

A once-parched flood plain has become a bustling ''mini Kakadu'' after farmers used irrigation infrastructure to mimic Murrumbidgee flows, writes Debra Jopson.


In a remote reach of NSW, a city of birds has suddenly appeared, building prime waterfront residences in which to pamper their young and feasting on a smorgasbord that floods and rain have brought to the Murrumbidgee.

A wildlife boom inspired by an abundance of water has turned the Lowbidgee flood plain into a noisy, bustling ''mini Kakadu'' as about 20,000 ibises and thousands of other waterbirds including spoonbills and musk ducks make their nests on wetlands which until recently were parched by drought and dams.

''If you had been here 12 months ago you would have seen it at its absolute worst. It was a moonscape,'' said Michael Spinks, a member of a group of landholders on this flood plain between Hay and Balranald.

They use irrigation infrastructure to channel environmental flows to keep the birds happy, mimicking the flows of the mighty Murrumbidgee before it was dammed.


At the Telephone Bank rookery on Torry Plains Station, not far from the grain farm of Steve Blore, the air is rich with the honking and gamey smell of about 5000 straw-necked ibis that have built nests with glossy and white ibises.

Scientists call it a ''major breeding event'' but up close it is a dazzling assembly of lignum-twig nests like woven baskets holding blue or white eggs or wide-mouthed chicks, above which adults perch in trees carrying branches in their beaks for home improvements.

''The Lowbidgee is the most important wetland by far on the Murrumbidgee. There are very few places where you get these mega breeding events occurring,'' says Richard Kingsford, known as ''Professor Duck'', who heads the Australian wetlands and river centre at the University of NSW.


The centre manager, Sharon Ryall, who spent last week wading around the nests checking how many eggs had hatched successfully, says: ''This is a very rare thing. You don't get it very often because of the boom and bust nature of Australia.''

Ryall and research fellow Kate Brandis use a small motorboat to navigate watery roads in the bird city, with tags and waterproof notebooks to document how many young survive.

It is easy to peer right into a nest and to catch a black glossy ibis chick pecking its way out of a bright blue egg, or to see a cluster of week-old crying spoonbill chicks dusted in what looks like white snow - their parents' excrement.

Ryall can answer the question: what's to love about the white ibis?

''The white ibis you see in the parks in Sydney are a beautiful bird in their native habitat. They are not the trash birds you see in Hyde Park,'' she says.

Spinks is hoping that all three ibis species will help defend them from locust attack as authorities warn of the possibility of the worst plague in 30 years.

''We have [1620 hectares] of wheat crop and Steve and I have a rookery at each end. Ibis are known throughout the world as the farmers' friend. They will eat half a kilo in one day - and more when they have fledglings. That's a lot of grasshoppers,'' he says.

It is a mystery where the birds come from, how they know water will be there and where they go afterward.

Blore says: ''How they know has got me beat. I have been out in the swamp when it is dead dry and a duck comes out of a hollow. By the time the chicks are born, the water is there. How do they know that? You see them in the thermals. We say they are sending text messages to their mates - they've got to get up there to get coverage.''

Kingsford says research indicates they make incredible reconnaissance journeys in which they detect the approach of low-pressure weather systems signalling water in their breeding grounds.

''They just belt up and go on a sort of round trip,'' he says.

When a Deakin University scientist, David Roshier, put transmitter devices on grey teal, one from northern NSW flew 1268 kilometres over 10 days, heading west and returning via southern Queensland.

The birds are at the top of the food chain, which begins with vital eggs and seeds set down in soils during one boom event, only to flourish in the next, says Kingsford.

''As soon as that water arrives, the seeds will germinate and the invertebrates will hatch out. There are thousands of species. A sort of invertebrate soup is created,'' he says.

''Waterbirds are generally the first to breed. They arrive, there is a smorgasbord, they build up fat very quickly and as soon as they build up fat, they have the urge to breed.

''That smorgasbord also brings in fish and reptiles.

''You've got this incredibly vibrant community and everything's eating everything else.''

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/wetland-wonderland-breeds-birds-paradise-20101105-17hl6.html