Building capacity in waterbird and wetland monitoring in eastern Africa

The wetlands of eastern Africa support internationally important assemblages of plants and animals, and are a vital source of livelihood and water for many societies. The combined human population of Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda is estimated to be about 200 million. The region has an area of about 5.6 million km2 of which only 4.5% is open water/wetlands. Wetland conversion to agriculture often provides only short-term benefits and can pose long-term problems. The ever-increasing human population density coupled with the scarce water resources in Africa have put African governments under increasing pressure to allow further exploitation and drainage of wetlands. Lack of sufficient up-to-date information to guide policy and development programmes for the respective Africa governments is considered as one of the causes for the continued loss and degradation of wetlands. To fill this information gap, it was recognized that a standardized system for monitoring wetland biodiversity and making the data and information available to governments and other stakeholders was required. In 2002, a project was implemented to build and maintain capacity in the monitoring of wetland biodiversity in eastern Africa and to provide the necessary information required for wetland conservation. This paper describes the capacity building process leading to: (1) the development of a wetlands database with query tools; (2) the provision of training in the use of the wetland monitoring database; (3) the launch of the Wetland Biodiversity Monitoring Scheme (WBMS) to provide data for use in wetland conservation and development of site management plans; and (4) training in the development of a wetland site management plan in each of the nine partner countries

Building capacity in waterbird and wetland monitoring in eastern Africa

The wetlands of eastern Africa support internationally important assemblages of plants and animals, and are a vital source of livelihood and water for many societies. The combined human population of Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda is estimated to be about 200 million. The region has an area of about 5.6 million km2 of which only 4.5% is open water/wetlands. Wetland conversion to agriculture often provides only short-term benefits and can pose long-term problems. The ever-increasing human population density coupled with the scarce water resources in Africa have put African governments under increasing pressure to allow further exploitation and drainage of wetlands. Lack of sufficient up-to-date information to guide policy and development programmes for the respective Africa governments is considered as one of the causes for the continued loss and degradation of wetlands. To fill this information gap, it was recognized that a standardized system for monitoring wetland biodiversity and making the data and information available to governments and other stakeholders was required. In 2002, a project was implemented to build and maintain capacity in the monitoring of wetland biodiversity in eastern Africa and to provide the necessary information required for wetland conservation. This paper describes the capacity building process leading to: (1) the development of a wetlands database with query tools; (2) the provision of training in the use of the wetland monitoring database; (3) the launch of the Wetland Biodiversity Monitoring Scheme (WBMS) to provide data for use in wetland conservation and development of site management plans; and (4) training in the development of a wetland site management plan in each of the nine partner countries

Palaearctic migrant waterbirds overlap in habitat use with residents at Lake Turkana, Kenya

Volume: 18Start Page: 20End Page: 3

African winter population trends of European waterbirds : the identification of critical sites and the effectiveness of Ramsar and IBA site designation for the conservation of migratory waterbirds

IBA = important bird are