Results & Reports

Counting on Troubridge Is., South Australia 2008 © Kent Treloar

2008-2009 National Count Summaries

The final summaries and report for the winter 2008 and summer 2008-2009 national counts, as  published in the October 2009 edition of Stilt, can now also be downloaded here.

Download national shorebird count summary winter 2008 to summer 2008-09 [pdf: 139kb]

2009 Report to Funders

Shorebird populations continue to decline according to reports released this year from northwest Western Australia, Queensland and the Coorong in South Australia. Similarly, reports of habitat loss throughout the flyway have continued, and a recent review by Birds Australia found evidence that 21 shorebird species are showing evidence of declines at one or more sites in Australia. As shorebird numbers and available shorebird habitat continues to decline, it is critical that we are able to increase the confidence with which we can report national population changes.

In this past year significant steps were made toward meeting the objectives of the Shorebirds 2020 Program, and if continued will provide the required data, resources and capacity to adequately inform shorebird conservation and management efforts. The expansion of the program this year exceeded our expectations. In credibly, in the summer of 2008/09 between 500-1000 volunteers counted shorebirds at over 155 priority shorebird areas, with additional opportunistic counts at a further 225 sites nationally.

Download the full report here [3.2 mb]

2007-2008 National Summer and Winter Count Summary

In 2007 Birds Australia, in collaboration with AWSG, NHT and WWF, launched Shorebirds 2020 with the aim of reinvigorating shorebird monitoring in Australia. As a result, there has been a large increase in the number of people undertaking shorebird counts across Australia. Further, shorebird data is available for a greater number of shorebird areas: many are areas that have not been surveyed in recent years, others are new areas that have not been regularly surveyed in the past.

Download report and count summaries [pdf: 196kb]

2008 Reports

Over the last year the Shorebirds 2020 team have been developing a monitoring program for shorebirds in Australia that will allow us to detect national population trends, mapping important shorebirds areas, and putting together a shorebird counters toolkit online. The main recommendation to come out of this work is that we need to count shorebirds at more sites – around 150 – in order to be able to detect population trends at the national level for the majority of shorebird species.

Shorebird areas with higher numbers of shorebirds are better with those than less, and it is very important that counts are carried out in the same way at each site over the years, so that we can compare the data. If you would like to find out more, download the following reports:

Download Population Monitoring Program for Shorebirds in Australia [pdf: 740kb]

Download Identification of Significant Sites for Shorebirds in Australia [pdf: 768kb]

Download Shorebirds 2020 Final Report July 2008 [pdf: 280kb]