Support East Europeans to Develop Bird Indicators (SEED Bird Indicators) Prepared by Sylvia Barova - project coordinator, BSPB/BirdLife Bulgaria Pictures: S. Spasov

Project aim: To strengthen the capacity of NGOs to create policy change in biodiversity conservation by producing and using the EU accepted wild bird indicators

Project is funded by GEF SGP and co-financed by RSPB, EBCC, BVCF and project partners Project estimated total budget: $ ,32 (includes all sources of funding) Duration : 2 years (September September 2008) SEED BI is the first GEF Strategic Project

Project partners : Bulgaria: Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds/BirdLife Bulgaria – executing NGO Belarus: Akhova Ptushak Belarusi/BirdLife Belarus Macedonia: Macedonian Ecological Society Romania: Romanian Ornithological Society/BirdLife Romania Turkey: Doğa Derneği (Nature Society)/BirdLife Designate in Turkey Poland: Polish Society for the Protection of Birds/BirdLife Designate Poland Lithuania: Lithuanian Ornithological Society/BirdLife Lithuania PECBM (EBCC – BirdLife): Pan-European CBM Scheme (PECBM) is the initiative of European Bird Census Council (EBCC) and BirdLife International.

Participating countries are split in 3 groups Group 1 - Belarus, Turkey and Macedonia which didn’t have CBM scheme operational and started one with this project; Group 2 - Romania and Lithuania which had running CBM schemes but with limited species and habitat coverage and so needed improvement; Group 3 - Bulgaria and Poland which had full running CBM schemes but still have room for improvements, especially in knowledge of young and inexperienced fieldworkers and working with policy makers.

Centres of diversity of farmland birds. After Arnold. C. and McCullough, J. (2007) Where we work:

Project activities: Group 1 Belarus, Turkey and Macedonia capacity assessment of the countries to start and implement full scheme or international census plots; training workshops, establishing international census plots and sending the data to the PECBM; preparation of simple bird guides on local languages and information materials about CBM etc.

National advocacy forum before policy makers Producing information materials about biodiversity indicators and CBM scheme. Capacity building workshop for volunteers Producing and distributing methodological instructions, filed forms and maps among observers Producing and distributing basic bird guides and CDs Establishing new national census plots Preparation of old data and send them to PECBM Project activities: Group 2 Romania and Lithuania

Project activities: Group 3 Bulgaria and Poland International/national advocacy forum before with policy makers Develop the capacity for producing reports on regional level Capacity building workshops with volunteers Producing information materials about CBM for target groups Producing and distributing methodological instructions and field forms, basic bird guides and CDs Producing and distributing CBM newsletter Setting up a system to collect data via internet Analyzing the CBM data for farmland birds and sending the results to the National Institutes of Statistics Publicizing and making available the CBM results trough CHM Audit of national policy and legislation use of CBM outputs Establishing collaboration with ecology and biology departments of Universities Setting up a project website

The main achievements for year 1 are: 3 new countries, started pilot CBM schemes – Turkey, Belarus and Macedonia (where the project delivered training, methodology, field forms, information dissemination, recruiting a volunteers etc.) Lithuania re-started it’s CBM scheme Three international training workshops were held The first ever birdguide in Macedonian is in print There are more printed materials in all 7 countries to help the observers and raise awareness about CBM The profile of CBM, bird indicators, the NGO, BirdLife International, EBCC, GEF/SGP was raised among students, universities, state institutions and other national stakeholders as well as international “bird” authorities. All SEED BI local coordinators met at EBCC conference in Chiavenna

CountryMethodology# plots# partici pants Database Belarustransects31 (14 returned) 18no Turkeytransects1113Excel file, later on Access Macedoniatransects1420no RomaniaPoint counts5855Access Lithuaniatransects60 (expected) – 28 so far 60Will have in Access Bulgariatransects133118Access Polandtransects379211Access

Main areas for improvement: Advocacy and closer work with policy makers, especially for advanced countries is needed (Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and Poland) Fundraising – except Poland, no other country managed to find sources of funding to secure their CBM schemes after the end of the project. More active recruitment and retention of observers have to be achieved

Conclusions: SEED BI is an organization development project which provide opportunity for partners to: Develop or strength network of volunteers/supporters Provide basic tools for field work, which are important especially for beginners Citizen science approach – awareness for nature conservation among the participants is raised and sustained For some of the partners this is the first attempt for scientific robust monitoring Bridge field work with high level policy work Opportunity for membership recruitment and retention