BirdLife International (the RSPB is the BirdLife Partner in the UK) has just published a handy round-up of news covering the Important Bird Area (IBA) programme.
One of the cornerstones of bird conservation world-wide is the identification of (IBAs). The programme has already identified 11,000 areas in 200 countries – and still the work goes on. The rigorous identification of IBAs is essential if they are to be effectively protected. In Europe, over 3,600 IBAs have been identified and progress towards designating them as Special Protection Areas (SPAs) under the terms of the Birds Directive. The IBAs identified by BirdLife International is a key consideration in helping member states to identify the location of Special Protection Areas, an approach that has been backed up by the European Court of Justice on several occasions.
In the UK the Government has developed its own guidelines for selecting SPAs. This has resulted in a much smaller SPA network than indicated by the UK IBA network. Even though the Government has been designating SPAs for 30 years we can still point to significant gaps in the network. This isn’t just a paper exercise as without the designation rare, threatened and migratory birds are vulnerable to land use change and management. There is still much to do on land but it is at sea that the gaps are most obvious and beyond the obvious risks to the seabirds involved, creates uncertainty in planning for the expansion of offshore renewable energy generation.