The New EuroBirdPortal Viewer Launches in Brussels

On 8 October, the official launch event for the new European Bird Portal (EBP) Viewer took place in Brussels, bringing together EBP partners, stakeholders, and bird enthusiasts at the Mundo B building. The event marked an important milestone for one of Europe’s most ambitious citizen science initiatives, giving us a chance to showcase the new EBP viewer and its powerful features to a wider audience.

The event was organised with invaluable support from Natagora, one of our Belgian partners. We were honoured to welcome opening remarks from Natagora President Christian Verschueren and Sergi Herrando, Chair of the European Bird Census Council (EBCC). The event was hosted by Ruud Foppen of SOVON, who offered a fascinating look back at the origins of the project, having served as EBCC Chair when the EBP was first conceived in 2012.

Participants at the launch event

The new viewer has been made possible through funding from the LIFE EBP Reinforcement Project. During the event, Frank Vassen from the European Commission’s DG-ENV highlighted the significance of this achievement and shared his vision for the future potential of Europe’s largest near real-time biodiversity dataset. Participants also heard from Inmaculada Aznar of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), who spoke about the successful collaboration between EFSA and EBP on the EFSA Bird Flu Radar, an early warning system designed to help detect outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in wild birds.

What Does the New EBP Viewer Show?

Gabriel Gargallo, EBP Project Coordinator at ICO, presented the project’s remarkable progress over the past decade. He demonstrated how the steadily growing volume of bird observations has transformed the viewer, filling the map with data collected across Europe from 2010 to the present day. The project has not only expanded in quantity but has also seen major improvements in data quality, with increasing numbers of complete lists and structured protocols.

“The viewer may have started as a vision in 2012, but today we have achieved what once seemed impossible: displaying the weekly distribution of 567 bird species across Europe, updated almost in real time,” said Gabriel Gargallo.

“These include all species that occur regularly and naturally within the EU, introduced species with self-sustaining breeding populations, and a selection of regularly occurring vagrants. Every day, new data are automatically submitted to the EBP central database, allowing the viewer’s maps to be updated with the latest information available.”

The result is a valuable tool that provides up-to-date insights into bird movements across Europe, helping researchers, conservationists, policymakers, and the wider public better understand the continent’s bird populations.

Powered by Collaboration Across Europe

Gabriel Gargallo, EBP project coordinator, showing the partnership across Europe

The success of the EBP is built on an extraordinary network of collaboration. The project brings together 52 ornithological organisations from 41 countries and more than 20 different online portals, creating a truly pan-European effort to collect, harmonise, and share bird observation data.

As Samuel Wechsler, Chair of the EBP Executive Committee, explained:

“The diversity of systems and online portals across Europe is almost as great as the diversity of our national partners. Bringing all these different pieces together into a single, coherent platform has been a major challenge. We are therefore extremely grateful to all the IT people working for different online portals and at the EBP coordination team, whose expertise has made it possible to create this unique Europe-wide picture of bird occurrences in near-real time.”

At the Heart of the Project: Citizen Science

Above all, the EuroBirdPortal is a success story for citizen science. The project relies on the dedication of more than 200,000 volunteer birdwatchers who regularly submit their observations through national and regional bird recording portals.

Every sighting helps us better understand bird movements and occurrences across Europe, creating a resource of immense value for futher research.

To all the volunteers who share their observations, thank you. Your enthusiasm, commitment, and passion for birds make the EuroBirdPortal possible.