In preparation for the 8^th edition of the AEWA Conservation Status Report (CSR8), assessment of the status of waterbird populations listed in Annex 3 of the Agreement has been undertaken. The Contracting Parties are invited to review this assessment and provide comments, as necessary.

Detailed description of the population size and trend estimates is available on the Waterbird Population Estimates (WPE) Portal. To access the estimates, please first register and then log in. Once logged in, please select “Start searching the database now!” and then select “CSR8 draft” under Publication and “AEWA” under Conservation framework. Alternatively, you can click on this direct link.

On the WPE portal, the trend assessment refers to the short-term (10-year) trend. However, further information is provided in the notes concerning the long-term (three generations and beyond) trends, which is the criterion for listing populations under categories A3(c) and B2(c) in Table 1 of AEWA Annex 3.

Should you have any comments, please insert them directly into the WPE Portal by 11 December 2020 (field “Edit or comment” under column “Actions” in the respective page of each population). The short deadline is mandated by the timeline related to the forthcoming meeting of the AEWA Technical Committee, which shall review and approve the draft CSR8.

Several background documents are accessible on the website of Wetlands International and the results of the International Waterbird Census (IWC) trend analysis (Nagy & Langendoen, 2020) are available on the IWC Online Portal.

This status assessment has drawn extensively on the draft of the new edition of the European Red List of Birds (BirdLife International, in prep.) that is expected to be published in 2021. This dataset builds on EU Member States official submissions to the reporting under Article 12 of the EU Birds Directive, which is already publicly available, and complements it for other European countries. Complementary data has been used from the breeding season population estimates for West Siberia and Central Asia (Kalyakin et al., 2020) and from AEWA national population status reports for the period 2013-2018 (submitted by Contracting Parties to the UNEP/AEWA Secretariat in 2020).  

This assessment also used the Red List status available on the BirdLife International Data Zone on 25 November 2020 and the latest generation length figures from BirdLife International based mainly on Birds et al. (2020).

For any inquiries, please contact Mr Sergey Dereliev, Head of Science, Implementation and Compliance at the UNEP/AEWA Secretariat.