Simultaneous January 2020 waterbird and wetland census along the East Atlantic Flyway

National Reports

Countries from Iceland to Estonia and from Norway to South Africa, all along the East Atlantic Flyway, participated in the 2020 East Atlantic Flyway waterbird survey. In many countries in East Atlantic Africa, financial support and extra counters were organized to contribute to this survey.

Countries have been requested to contribute a small national overview to give a first impression of the results collected. 32 countries are presenting their results in this report. A further 5 have collected count data which can be used in future analyses. A total of more than 12,000 observers have collected this data, often in their free time but also large contributions from government institutions, national park and nature reserves officers, NGOs, and research organisations are involved. 250 waterbird species have been recorded in total. Of the 95 East Atlantic Flyway focal species, more than 14 million birds have been counted. At 110 important sites information about environmental circumstances, human use and pressures have been collected. A comprehensive analysis of the population status of the species using this flyway and the state of the wetlands they use will be published at the end of 2021.

This work is part of a cooperation between the Wadden Sea Flyway Initiative (WSFI), Wetlands International (WI), and BirdLife International (BLI) to improve the monitoring of waterbirds and wetlands along the East Atlantic Flyway. This cooperation was initiated after the inscription of the Wadden Sea (shared by Denmark, Germany, and The Netherlands) as a World Heritage site in 2009.

Citation for the whole report

van Roomen M., Agblonon G., Langendoen T., Citegetse G., Diallo A. Y., Gueye K., van Winden E. & Luerssen G. (eds.) (2020) Simultaneous January 2020 waterbird census along the East Atlantic Flyway: National Reports. Wadden Sea Flyway Initiative p/a Common Wadden Sea Secretariat, Wilhelmshaven, Germany, Wetlands International, Wageningen, The Netherlands, BirdLife International, Cambridge, United Kingdom.