CONFERENCE REPORT
PROTECTED BIRD AREAS IN EUROPE:
selection, management and protection
BOU/JNCC Conference, University of Leicester, 14-16 April 2000
by Nicola Crockford
One hundred delegates from ten countries assembled for a weekend to
think about protected areas for birds in Europe, stimulated by a
wide-ranging programme drawn together.
The meeting began laughter-muscle-achingly on Friday night with Tony
Fox’s slide show on how goose field work may damage your health.
Displaying a well-developed sense of British bar-room humour, the range of
circumpolar toilet facilities was a running theme. It also served to
highlight that most of us at the meeting had begun with a passion for
birds, even though many of us had outwardly transformed over the years
into ‘barely literate bureaucrats’ (as styled by David Stroud)!
Following our President, Ian Newton’s welcome, Sir Angus Stirling,
JNCC Chairman, opened proceedings on Saturday morning, promoting
co-operation and an international perspective. John Sheail gave a history
of protected areas in the UK. It showed how progress, especially in the
first half of last century, had been dependent on visionary, energetic
individuals and non-governmental organisations (NGO) whose ideas were
ultimately taken up by the Government. It is worrying how many of the
lessons they pointed out, still haven’t been learnt. In the many
countries where protected area action is still at the stage where
individuals can make a huge difference, lets hope for speedier progress
than in the UK during the last century.
Colin Bibby gave the first of a series of useful, strategic talks, five
of which were from the BirdLife stable. He reviewed methods of protected
area selection, and this was probably the talk most referred to by
subsequent speakers. Two RSPB Daves talked: Pritchard on the need to
define explicit objectives for networks of protected areas and then to
enshrine these in policy and law; and D Gibbons with a talk itemising
research needs which he jokingly subtitled ‘What did science ever do for
protected bird areas?’
Returning to birds themselves, knot-maestro Theunis Piersma gave an
entertainingly illustrated talk on his eco-physiological research on
long-distance migrants. Goose aficionados got their kicks on Friday thanks
to Tony, now it was the turn of the wader fans. For this conference
audience, which ranged from stalwart BOU members to bureaucrats, there was
universal fascination in such a talk, where international fieldwork and
technological wizardry combine to provide completely new knowledge on the
life of birds.
Also popular were talks by Les Underhill and Marc Herremans on the
South African BIRP (Birds in Reserve Project) and by Martin Flade on the
new way of protecting areas in the former East Germany. Both described
innovative approaches that were making real progress and proving the maxim
that ‘bigger is better’. The BIRP, using Les’s characteristically
natty statistics of Atlas data, had shown that many birds were doing
better in larger savannah/woodland reserves and could even determine the
minimum suitable reserve size for several species. In Germany, the Federal
Government had decided to capitalise on the biodiversity wealth of the
dramatically larger scale, less intensively managed landscape of the
former East Germany; it set up a relatively well resourced state agency
for large scale protected areas in Brandenburg which, in the last ten
years has taken truly visionary steps, including legally binding
management plans, and effective encouragement for a switch to organic
farming.
After lunch a couple of talks focused on particular wetlands: Anky
Woudstra on the range of problems facing the Waddensea and Chris Gibson on
the challenges and opportunities of managing the Essex estuaries in the
face of sea-level rise. David Stroud followed with another of the useful,
strategic talks, providing a commentary on the guidelines of the Ramsar
Convention for involving local communities in wetland management.
The day’s final session was Danish in flavour (appropriate, since
Denmark is top of the class for conservation of Special Protection Areas (SPAs)
under the EU Birds Directive!). Tony Fox reported on an analysis, using
data from Denmark and the UK, to determine how much pintail have benefited
from protected areas. Thomas Bregnballe described experiments on the
response of wildfowl numbers on reserves to a range of different hunting
restrictions.
The BOU AGM was exemplary in lasting only a matter of minutes and so
losing us no time in the bar. During the conference dinner, the
traditional toast to ‘absent Ibises’ was particularly poignant for
Chris Bowden (RSPB research biologist leading on bald ibis work in
Morocco). What about giving other species a turn at future annual
dinners?!
The Sunday 9 am ‘graveyard’ slot went to Micheal O Briain of the
European Commission, despite which his talk on SPAs was surprisingly
lively and referred to many of the previous talks. Although a Brussels
bureaucrat, he began as a goose man. The next speaker, Tim Jones, latterly
of the Ramsar Convention, is another example of a bird person turned
international bureaucrat who felt that attendance at this ornithological
conference was like ‘coming home’.
A couple of talks then described the remarkable achievements of two NGO
networks. Taej Mundkar, in the second of two non-European insights at the
meeting, told us of the exciting progress being co-ordinated by Wetlands
International along the Asia-Pacific Waterfowl Flyway. Melanie Heath then
reported on BirdLife International’s latest outstanding achievement: the
publication of the book ‘Important Bird Areas in Europe’ and
associated database, providing staggering amounts of vital data on 3,600
Important Bird Areas.
Mike Smart gave us a portrait of wetland conservation in the
Mediterranean, including, depressingly, slides taken by Max Nicholson in
the 1970s of wonderful habitats at Lake Ichkeul, Tunisia which have since
been destroyed due to dams, despite Ichkeul having every international
protection designation in the book - such is the power of the Ministry of
Water Resources. Mark Tasker gave the final talk; a thought provoking
discussion on marine protected areas for birds including a slide of
puffins being barbecued ‘to up the number of bird pictures shown at the
conference’.
Colin Galbraith, Scottish Natural Heritage and David Stroud had
compiled a draft set of conference conclusions from those presented in
each talk, and Colin gave a lively and slick Powerpoint presentation of
these, with David manning the laptop (there was debate on the backrow as
to whether the Powerpoint background they had chosen for the slides
represented ‘"blue sky thinking" clouded with cirrocumulus’
or ‘blueberry "pie in the sky"’.
Did I have any criticisms of the conference? Well it is regrettable
that more speakers did not leave time for discussion, but my main sadness
was that not a single eastern European participated, even though the
conference identified eastern Europe as a priority for action, given its
disproportionately high importance for birds in Europe.
The number of participants in this conference who had undergone the
metamorphosis from birder to bureaucrat, I actually take to be a very
positive reflection on the ornithological community. It is this trend that
perhaps part explains why bird conservation is so much further advanced
than that for other taxa. If we want to make significant progress in the
conservation of birds and other wildlife, a major, continuing challenge is
to find a common language between biologists/naturalists and policy
makers. Surely the ornithologists-turned-officials are in a strong
position to help bridge this gap: they need, however, to remember that to
make strategic and policy speak more digestible to bird people (and indeed
any ordinary people!) it needs, for example, to be heavily interspersed
with vivid pictures of birds and on the ground examples with results.
A particularly vivid image from Taej Mundkar’s talk was of the
spontaneous linking of hands at the launch of the Asia-Pacific Migratory
Waterbird Conservation Strategy 1996-2000 — governmental, NGO and
scientific hands alike! An example to be followed in the UK or Brussels,
for example??! As Taej said ‘The future is in our hands’.
— from Ibis 142: 4
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