Monitoring

Co-ordinated counts of Lesser White-fronted Goose along the flyway

We will arrange two international workshops in order to establish and strengthen local  Lesser White-fronted Goose (LWfG) conservation groups in areas where there are potential stopover and wintering sites of LWfG. Based on the present knowledge, such sites have been identified at least in Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary (other areas than Hortobágy), Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia, and there are such sites possibly also e.g. in Serbia, Romania and Turkey.

The project will support the local teams established by covering part of their costs of LWfG monitoring. The project will act as a link between the ornithologists and LWfG monitoring teams along the flyway of the Fennoscandian LWfG. Contacts will be made with the national / regional ornithological or nature conservation societies in all countries with potential but still poorly known staging sites and they will be invited and motivated to take part in the network of co-ordinated LWfG monitoring.

Standard instructions for field monitoring and reporting will be developed and made available to the local teams, and an e-mail list will be established for those contact persons. During the migration periods, the local contact persons will be informed personally regarding the times when the main flock of Fennoscandian LWfG is expected to arrive in their area. An electronic form will be established for online reporting of LWfG observations in order to facilitate reporting.

Recent observation of LWfG along the flyway are reported on the Portal to the Lesser White-fronted Goose . You can also report your observation of LWfG by email.

This action is lead by WWF Finland.

Monitoring the project’s effectiveness

Monitoring the project’s effectiveness is divided in two parts. Firstly, monitoring the project’s implementation is carried out by the Project Management Group who ensures the timely course of the planned actions, together with the appropriate reporting and evaluation tools that will assess and fine tune the course of the project.

Secondly, monitoring the effectiveness of the concrete conservation actions will be carried out throughout the course of the project at the project sites, using standardized methods in order to achieve estimates on the LWfG population development, demographic aspects, space use and the effect of the project actions.

Data collected during the previous LIFE project and other relevant projects will comprise the baseline against which to evaluate the outcome of the concrete conservation actions.

This action is lead by Hellenic Ornithological Society HOS.