Migratory waders in Africa and Western Eurasia in the 1990s

In its rôle as a global wader expert network for Wetlands International, the International wader Study Group undertakes the compilation and interpretation of wader population estimates (although the responsibility for data collation from the IWC resides with Wetlands International1. WSG also acts as the wader Specialist Group for IUCN-The World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission.

For some years, the WSG has been involved in re-evaluating population sizes and trends of all species of migratory waders in Africa and Western Eurasia. To this end, technical workshops were held in Belgium in 1996 and in Hungary in 1998 associated with the Group's annual conference.

The final results (which assessed 131 populations of 55 species) were incorporated into Wetlands International's third edition of Waterbird Population Estimates - a publication that in November 2002 was launched at and endorsed by the eighth Conference of the Parties to the Ramsar Convention in Spain. Ramsar CoP8 urged governments and others to use these population data and derived 1% thresholds for the identification of sites of international importance. A fourth edition of WPE is due to be presented to Ramsar CoP9 in 2005.

The results were also included in the global; review of wader population status undertaken at WSG's 2003 annual Conference in Spain, the results of which were summarised in the Cadiz Conclusions .

For the East Atlantic Flyway, this review updates the assessment made by Cor Smit and Theunis Piersma in the 1980s and which was published in 1989. For other flyway systems in Africa and Western Eurasia, there have been no prior systematic population reviews.

The review is initially published on this web-site as volume 15 of WSG's occasional series International Wader Studies. We hope to raise the necessary funds to be able to print and distribute the review as a conventional publication, but WSG currently has no funding to permit this.

The document is downloadable as several pdf files as follows:

1. Introduction & methods (394 KB)
2. Species and population accounts (539 KB)
3. Results (sites, monitoring and flyways), Discussion, acknowledgements and references (1.07 MB)
4. Tables 3. Key sites in the non-breeding period (40 KB)
5. Tables 4. Key sites in migration periods (17 KB)
6. Annex 1. Sources of data: country metadata (44 KB)
7. Annex 2. Summary tabulation of data for each population (204 KB)
8. Annex 3. Country mid-winter count totals used to generate new estimates (263 KB)
9. Annex 4. National estimates of breeding waders used to generate new estimates (354 KB)
10. Annex 5. Geographic analysis of trends by breeding area (4.65 MB)

A zipped file containing the whole report as a single PDF file is downloadable here:

• Zip file containing International Wader Studies 15 (3.18 MB)

The report is long (259 pp) and detailed. For those in need of summary tabulated data of the current status of wader populations (and comparisons with previous assessments), we suggest this is best provided by Annex 2.

Thanks to all contributors!