Citizens, science and bird conservation

Abstract

Collaborative research by networks of amateurs has had a major role in ornithology and conservation science and will continue to do so. It has been important in establishing the facts of migration, systematically recording distribution, providing insights into habitat requirements and recording variation in numbers, productivity and survival, thus allowing detailed demographic analyses. The availability of these data has allowed conservation work to be focussed on priority species, habitats and sites and enabled refined monitoring and research programmes aimed at providing the understanding necessary for sound conservation management and for evidencebased government policy. The success of such work depends on the independence of the science from those advocating particular policies in order to ensure that the science is unbiased. Wetland birds are surveyed in much of the world. Most countries also have a ringing scheme. Other forms of collaborative ornithology are strong in North America, Australia and Australasia, more patchily distributed in Asia (but with strong growth in some countries) and even patchier in Africa and South America. Such work is most successful where there is a strong partnership between the amateurs and the professional, based on their complementary roles. The participation of large numbers of volunteers not only enables work to be done that would otherwise be impossible but also facilitates democratic participation in the decisions made by society and builds social capital. The recruitment to and subsequent retention of people in the research networks are important skills. Surveys must be organized in ways that take into account the motives of the participants. It is useful to assess the skills of potential participants and, rather than rejecting those thought not to have adequate skills, to provide training. Special attention needs to be paid to ensuring that instructions are clear, that methods are standardized and that data are gathered in a form that is easily processed. Providing for the continuity of long-term projects is essential. There are advantages to having just one organization running most of the work in each country. Various sorts of organizations are possible: societies governed by their (amateur) members but employing professional staff to organize the work seem to be a particularly successful model. Independence from government and from conservation organizations is desirable.

Using Heronry Birds to Monitor Urbanization Impacts: A Case Study of Painted Stork Mycteria leucocephala Nesting in the Delhi Zoo, India

“…While being coordinated by the zoo authorities, under the guidance of researchers and scientists from academic institutions, this program could derive its inputs from the efforts of volunteers such as local birdwatchers and school and college students. This will set the tone for generating long term data bases for breeding birds and also simultaneously taking a lead in initiating citizen science programs for the benefit of environment (Urfi 2004;Urfi et al 2005;Greenwood 2007). Since the birds in question are fairly large sized and their nests easily approachable they are also easy to monitor and no special equipment is required to study them.…”

The Citizen Science Landscape: From Volunteers to Citizen Sensors and Beyond

“…The British Trust for Ornithology, founded in 1932, also regularly uses data collected by amateur birdwatchers and makes up a very substantial amount of the National Biodiversity Network (http://www.nbn.org.uk/) which contains over 31 million records. The data of these programmes have helped to inform conservation actions, for example, by providing information to target conservation management at particular sites by environmental organisations [37].…”

“…By exploiting social networks in this way, for ecological or biological research, many of the most common mistakes or inaccuracies that are found within volunteered data could be minimised. For example, by sharing images, and temporal and GPS data, misidentifications and location inaccuracies can be flagged and checked by trained individuals [5,37,64,67,68]. Despite this, there are very few examples of social networking sites being used actively to collect data for biological or ecological research; this may be because of confusion over copyright laws or limitations of API systems.…”

“…Dickinson et al [10] reported that during Project FeederWatch between 2008 and 2009 they received 1,342,633 observations, out of those 378 records required "flagging" resulting in 158 records (54%) being confirmed, 45 identifications (16%) being corrected, and 88 reports (30%) being disregarded due to too little evidence. Indeed, the very nature of gathering large sets of data results in decreased detrimental effects of "noise", greater statistical power and increased robustness, as statistical power is a function of sample sizes [22,37]. Therefore, the common belief that volunteer collected data can only provide noisy and unreliable results that lack precision is generally incorrect [22,37].…”

“…Indeed, the very nature of gathering large sets of data results in decreased detrimental effects of "noise", greater statistical power and increased robustness, as statistical power is a function of sample sizes [22,37]. Therefore, the common belief that volunteer collected data can only provide noisy and unreliable results that lack precision is generally incorrect [22,37]. LePage and Francis [74] compared two citizen science programs with similar data collection protocols to test whether population patterns and distributions were temporally and spatially consistent.…”