Distribution changes, species richness and the role of protected areas in Europe and Northern Africa. The case study of waterbirds

Abstract

Evidence is accumulating that avian species, and particularly waterbirds, are responding to anthropogenic pressure and climate change by, inter alia, changing their distributions, both in the breeding and non-breeding season. This ongoing process raise a question about the effectiveness of the current network of protected areas delivering climate change adaptation for waterbird species at larger scale than individual countries. To improve the knowledge concerning this topic, we analysed 26 years of data on wintering waterbirds (International Waterbird Census) across 44 countries in Europe and Africa. Specifically, our goals were (1) to test if the winter abundances of 166 species have changed during the past three decades across the two most important flyways in Europe and northern Africa, (2) to study whether such long-term trends in wintering numbers differed between protected and unprotected areas (SPAs, RAMSAR) and between IBAs and non-IBAs, (3) to assess potential changes in species richness (i.e. number of species) over the study period in the northeastern, central and southwestern part of the flyways, and (4) to compare whether changes in richness is linked to the amount of protected land in each region. The results of the analyses will be discussed.