Insights into the 2024 Mediterranean Waterbirds Network (MWN) Meeting
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Waterbirds
Every year, the Mediterranean Waterbirds Network (MWN) meetings https://www.medwaterbirds.net/ bring together the IWC (International Waterbirds Census) national coordinators from several mediterranean countries. During these meetings, the network partners discuss the latest census event along with other topics related to monitoring and conservation of waterbirds.
This year’s meeting was hosted by the Tunisian Association “Les Amis des Oiseaux” and took place in Sousse, Tunisia, from the 27th to the 29th of May.
During the first part of the meeting, each national coordinator presented the IWC 2024 data from their respective countries, focusing on the observed bird abundance and species diversity as well as the number of sites covered, and the number of volunteers involved. North African coordinators emphasized the importance of sharing data promptly with each other and the necessity to prioritize certain sites over others due to the shortage of volunteers available in their vast countries, where wetlands are often remote and difficult to access.
The second major topic of the meeting regarded the definition of a detailed structure for the next IWC technical reports which will be published in 2025 and will contain a summary of the waterbird censuses carried out between 2019 and 2023 in several MWN member countries.
Many other topics were addressed during the meeting, among these the potential use of a phone app to collect census data in the field, with the aim of allowing for a faster transfer of such data from a local to a national level and thus to Wetlands International. An ongoing PhD project on the development of a statistical method to estimate rare species trends in presence of a high percentage of missing data was also presented.
For the members of the network, the annual MWN meeting can also be an occasion for learning. This year, an R training session was organized on the statistical methods necessary to estimate waterbird population trends from census data. Finally, along with the indoor activities, an entire morning was dedicated to exploring some of the nearby wetlands and observing waterbirds.
The MWN is coordinated by Tour du Valat, a member of Wetlands International Europe. This meeting was supported by the European Union LIFE grant awarded to Wetlands International Europe and the French Ministry of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion and the French Development Agency (AFD).
By Marta Lago, Tour du Valat.
