The 8th Session of Meeting of the Parties to the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) is taking place between 26-30 September 2022 in Budapest, Hungary. The key conclusion of the AEWA Conservation Status Report (CSR) (its 8th edition) is that, although our knowledge on the status of waterbirds has significantly improved, their conservation status has not. Around 40% of AEWA populations are in decline.
AEWA is the oldest and the only legally binding multi-species instrument for birds under the auspices of the Convention on Migratory Species. It provides a framework for the conservation and sustainable use of almost half a billion waterbirds comprising 560 populations of 255 water- and seabird species in Africa and Eurasia.
The CSR, whose key findings Szabolcs Nagy, Biodiversity Manager of Wetlands International Europe, presented on 27 September, draws on a number of bird monitoring programmes, including the African-Eurasian Waterbird Census (AEWC) (coordinated by Wetlands International Europe) and numerous other data sources. As such, the report is a product of the collaborative work of the African-Eurasian Waterbird Monitoring Partnership. It is based on the status assessment of each of the AEWA populations and these details are available on Wetlands International’s Waterbird Populations Portal.
The key conclusion of the CSR is that although our knowledge of the status of waterbirds has significantly improved, their conservation status has not. Around 40% of the AEWA populations are in decline. The proportion of declining populations is the highest in the Central and Southwest Asian and in the Eastern and Southern African flyways. A particularly concerning development is the negative changes reported in many of the purpose-level indicators of the AEWA Strategic Plan for 2019-2027, as the report highlights.
These results show that AEWA Parties will need to further step up their efforts to conserve migratory water- and seabirds. As many formerly common species are also affected – and the most frequently perceived threats include hunting and habitat degradation – governments should pay more attention to the conservation of key sites for congregatory birds and habitats for the more dispersed species. Furthermore, the report indicates that should also better regulate and control legal and illegal harvesting both at national and flyway-scale.
For the first time in the history of the CSR, the results are also summarised in a format designed for wider distribution.
Figure. Long-term population trends by flyways. Upper row, from left to right: Nearctic and Western Palearctic flyways: Atlantic, Black Sea and Mediterranean, Central and Southwest Asian. Middle row from left to right: intercontinental flyways: East Atlantic, Sahelian, West Asia – East African, Central Asian. Bottom row, from left to right: Afrotropical flyways: Western and Central African, Sub-Saharan, Eastern and Southern African. Colour codes from darkest to lightest blue: decreasing, stable/fluctuating, and increasing. The size of the circle indicates the number of populations.
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