Wild bird indicators paper wins press award

A recent paper produced by my colleague Richard Gregory and Arco van Strien, statistician at Statistics Netherlands, has won the UniBio Press Award for Ornithological Science.  This is another example of the excellence in the RSPB’s conservation science programme and deserved acclaim for Richard.

UniBio Press is the publisher of several biology-oriented academic journals. It is a non-profit organisation that distributes electronic journals including Ornithological Science and the journal of Ornithological Society of Japan.

The UniBio Press Award is given each year for each journal to the author(s) who produced their most frequently accessed paper in the previous year.

The paper is entitled: 'Wild bird indicators: using composite population trends of birds as measures of environmental health. Ornithological Science 9: 3—22 (2010).'

The paper reviews the strengths and weaknesses of using bird population trends as biodiversity indicators, and looks forward to how this work might be developed. There are a number of reasons to believe that birds might be useful indicators of biodiversity — they have a resonance and connection with people and their lives, they are sensitive to human impact and they are both well known and well recorded.

Wild bird indicators only measure a component of biodiversity change and they must be used with care to inform policy makers and land managers, but they have proven powerful tools in raising awareness of growing threats to nature and how nature is changing.

The wild bird indicators developed in Europe have already contributed to a global assessment of the 2010 biodiversity target and many European governments and the EU have adopted them for use. This work provides a blueprint for others to follow using similar information on other wildlife, and in other countries and regions around the world.

Congratulations, Richard!  And here's to more awards for our team of scientists.