Using citizen science data for a species recovery project for house martins in Swiss communities

Abstract

House martins are in decline in many western European countries. The reasons for the decline are poorly understood, but as a species placing their nest on the outside of buildings, the house martin strongly depends on human tolerance. Beside the general decrease in insect abundance, important causes for the decline thus are the disappearance of nests due to renovation or demolition of buildings, the diminishing acceptance of homeowners and inhabitants for house martin nests on buildings and a lack of loamy bare ground that offers nest building material where the birds are still welcome. As part of a long term species recovery project for the house martin, the Swiss Ornithological Institute started a web based citizen science project in 2013 to collect information on exact addresses of house martin colonies for conservation purposes throughout Switzerland. The data from this platform and from another large citizen science platform ornitho.ch were used to create an inventory of known locations with house martin nests. To enforce species conservation, each Swiss community harbouring house martin nests receives the inventory together with 2 new fact sheets: One is directed at home owners and inhabitants of buildings with nests and contains information about the breeding ecological of the species, the legal basis against removing nests and how to plan renovation work. The second is directed to the local governments and shows the possible conservation actions to be realized at the community level. The data of the inventory is available in a GIS-format and can thus easily be adopted by local authorities, ecologists, architects and developers during building development.