The Priolo Atlas: A citizen science-based census initiative for supporting Pyrrhula murina habitat conservation and restoration policies in São Miguel Island (Azores, Portugal)

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe endemic Azores Bullfinch or Priolo (Pyrrhula murina) is one of the most threatened European passerines, historically restricted to a single population in the Pico da Vara/Ribeira do Guilherme Special Protection Area (São Miguel Island, Azores, Portugal). Annual census of this species started in 1991. It usually took one observer 1-2 months to complete the census and even then, it was not logistically reasonable to include some areas with very steep slope in the core of the protected area. In order to bypass these constraints, an alternative and ambitious monitoring scheme that would allow estimating the whole species throughout its entire range was proposed in 2007. The new scheme, which complemented and improved previous estimates, consisted in performing a thorough instantaneous census using a distance sampling approach, thus allowing a detailed snapshot of effective occupation, density, habitat preferences and distribution range of the Azores Bullfinch. The Priolo Atlas turned into a volunteered geographic information and citizen science-based ornithological initiative which every 4 years congregates more than 50 well-trained volunteers in the Azores. With the first two editions (2008 and 2012), this initiative has already established itself as a critical tool to monitor the population of this endemic species.

How Many Azores Bullfinches Are There in the World? Case Study of a Threatened Species

“…Note that, despite the low number of observations, all models could be validated by the goodness-of-fit test (χ2), and the coefficient of variation is acceptable. There are relevant differences between some parameters presented in Table 3 regarding the density estimate, which shows two different scenarios: the first one presented by Gil et al (2016) and the second one suggested in this study and by [19]. The dissimilarity between these two scenarios is well represented in the population size calculated (tab.…”

“…2). There is an apparent disagreement between the study of [26], which estimated around 3500 individuals during the single morning surveys from 2008 and 2012, and previous studies estimates of 1064 [19] and 1608 [22] individuals.…”

“…1). 2016 was the third edition of the single morning survey and was previously implemented in 2008 and 2012 [19,26]. The annual monitoring consisted in registering all birds heard or seen for 8 minutes, across 158 counting points covering an area of nearly 9000 hectares.…”

“…All P. murina individuals seen or heard were recorded following the recommendations by [28] for snapshot surveys. To do this, we adopted the methodology of the previous Azores Bullfinch studies performed by [19] and [26] that defined the "snapshot" moment as precisely five minutes after arrival at the point.…”

Macaronesia as a Fruitful Arena for Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology

“…Several political, scientific and social initiatives toward improving conservation practices and public awareness have been established in Macaronesia. For example, the costeffectiveness of conservation and governance policies can be improved by relying on island ecosystem-based management (Calado et al, 2016;Gil et al, 2016a), stakeholder engagement and public participation (Gil et al, 2011(Gil et al, , 2016b, and funding to support and strengthen ecosystem functions and services delivery (e.g., Cruz et al, 2011;Fernandes et al, 2015). Hence, the last decade has witnessed the publication of important studies aiming to assist local and regional decision-making systems in moving toward more effective nature conservation planning and management policies in Macaronesia.…”