The European Bird Census Council has set up a Small Grant Fund (SGF) to support national bird monitoring activities, particularly in Europe's low- and middle-income countries. In 2023, we received ten applications for small grants from ten countries, and the EBCC Board has selected six projects as priorities for support. The projects come from six countries and request nearly 60,000 Euro in total. As the EBCC's resources are insufficient to fund all projects selected for support, we kindly ask individuals or organisations to donate and help us support the projects.
This Bird Census News issue focuses on what kind of additional taxa monitoring than birds is conducted in European bird monitoring programs based on a questionnaire to the national scheme coordinators. The questionnaire revealed that quite a few European countries already have ongoing mammal monitoring in their surveys and can calculate population trends for several species.
The European Bird Census Council (EBCC) has identified the development of bird monitoring in some European regions as a key target to achieve robust knowledge of the species’ status and trends. Without the possibility to provide some funding, this objective is likely to fail. Therefore, the EBCC has set up a Small Grant Fund (SGF), which is ready to receive contributions.
At the end of August, Hans Schmid retired after working at the Swiss Ornithological Institute for 37 years. He impersonated bird monitoring as not many others and can truly be named the "father of EuroBirdPortal".
This July, we started a new "LIFE EBP reinforcement" project. As the previous LIFE EBP project, this will be again a LIFE Preparatory project and, therefore, will address ad hoc EU Legislative and Policy Priorities. In this case, the project will reinforce the capabilities of the EBP and render its data compatible with those of the other EBCC projects (EBBA2 and PECBMS) to allow it to contribute the evidence required to inform the successful delivery of the EU Biodiversity Strategy
Over the last 30 years, European breeding birds have shifted their range by, on average, 2.4 km per year, according to new research. However, these changes significantly differed from expectations based on changing climate and land cover during that period. Based on climate alone, the researchers predicted that the average range shifts by species should have been around 50% faster. The study used survey data for 378 bird species collected as part of two Europe-wide bird distribution atlases produced by the European Bird Census Council 30 years apart.
The Swiss Ornithological Institute offers a 2-year post-doc in ecological modelling within the project “Scenarios for Protecting European Avian Redistributions (SPEAR)”. The Swiss National Science Foundation funded this project as a part of a Biodiversa+ grant and will heavily rely on data collected within the EBCC network (EBBA2 and PECBMS).
EBCC is launching a Small Grant Fund intending to support national bird monitoring activities by EBCC partner organisations in low- and middle-income countries in Europe.
For the first time, the European Union have awarded a prize for the outstanding citizen science project https://ars.electronica.art/citizenscience/en/. The EBCC received an Honorary Mention in this competition of various citizen science projects in Europe.
During the EBCC Annual General Meeting on 27 April 2023, the participants elected new EBCC Chair, Verena Keller, who replaced Mark Eaton, and Vice-Chair, Sergi Herrando, who took over the role from Verena Keller. We thank Mark, who stays a Board member, for his long-term work and his tremendous efforts as the EBCC Chairman.
