AfriBiRds Monitoring toolbox

A volunteering bird watcher

You would like to start bird watching as a nice hobby with the potentialities to share your local ornithological findings with our dedicated BirdLife International community? You would like to engage proactively as volunteer citizen scientist to increase the scientific knowledge on birds regionally?

A professional ornithologist

You are an experienced bird watcher or professional ornithologists? You would like to ensure that your regular bird monitoring work is contributing to draw a continental trend assessment for common birds?

An ecological monitoring officer

You are an ecological monitoring manager in African protected areas (e.g. biosphere reserves, national parks, forest reserves, Ramsar site, Natura 2000, IBAs, ...) and looking for

• 1. flexible guidelines to implement a regular bird population assessment with associated conservation programmes,
• 2. a free supportive off-line mobile application for your rangers to collect observations in the field on birds, mammals, insects, plants species for any biodiversity assessment,
• 3. a free online platform to archive and analyse your observations with the support of a devoted bird community?

A coordinator of biodiversity monitoring programmes

You are coordinating biodiversity monitoring programmes under the authority of an environment Ministry or of associated environmental agencies? You are looking for guidelines to set a national bird monitoring scheme compatible with other running initiatives (e.g Waterbird counts, IBAs, the Southern Bird Atlas Project, ...).

Supporting the assessment of environmental conservation strategies

Over the last 30 years, many environmental changes, such as those in land use and climate, have impacted on populations of birds across Africa and Europe. For effective conservation and informed decision making, we need the most up-to-date information on these impacts. The knowledge about the birds’ (changing) occurrences is a crucial part in targeting conservation actions. Moreover, it tells us much about the state of the wider environment. It also provides valuable data for scientific analyses and for assessing if and how projected changes are materialising.

Filling the knowledge gap on birds in Africa

The lack of bird watchers and consistent monitoring schemes in Africa creates a large information gap for: understanding the population trends of Afro-Palearctic migrant birds; weighing the different factors of decline operating either on birds’ wintering grounds, breeding grounds or on migration routes; and, consequently, for identifying ways to reverse the decreasing trends. As a result, it is hard for ornithologists to combine these inconsistent information and schemes to a global and standardised overview about the avian diversity in different African localities.

Initiating an African monitoring scheme as a standardised baseline for common birds

With a monitoring scheme, the AfriBiRds monitoring toolbox modestly aims to propose standards on manufacturing compatible pieces to complete an ambitious single puzzle. With that, bird observations are better structured and easier to communicate in order to get a more robust pan-African overview.