The Waterbird Fund aims to …
- Enable our local partners to conduct vital national monitoring programmes.
- Improve monitoring of waterbirds at key sites which are seldom counted because of limited resources.
- Guide science-based conservation and sustainable use of waterbirds.
Not convinced yet? This is why monitoring deserves your support…
Waterbird populations cover thousands of kilometres on their annual migrations, a route referred to as a “flyway”. Protecting them is a shared responsibility that requires collaboration across borders and cultures. Monitoring is essential to identify critical sites and protect against threats along the entire flyway. This science-based approach to conservation helps ensure efficient and effective use of funding and effort. Waterbird monitoring programmes like the International Waterbird Census are especially efficient because they rely on vast numbers of volunteer counters and use low cost “look and see” methods. These are also some of the world’s oldest continuous biodiversity monitoring programmes which means they give us hugely valuable information over extraordinary long time frames. That makes them incredibly useful data resources, not only to keep track of the health of waterbird populations but also their habitats, their ecosystems and the wider world around us.
More about the Waterbird Fund
The Waterbird Fund was established in 2016 in response to the invitation of the UNEP African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands to support waterbird monitoring. It was established with the African-Eurasian Waterbird Monitoring Partnership, and is managed by Wetlands International. It aligns its activities within all of the major global flyway initiatives. The fund was endorsed by the Convention on Migratory Species COP at its 12th Meeting of Conference of Parties in 2017.
