The International Waterbird Census Project
These days, more than 2000 people are starting Italian wetlands, the censuses of wintering waterbirds within the International Waterbird Census (IWC) project. The project is coordinated by ISPRA, which uses a network of over 500 expert surveyors and at least three times as many collaborators, distributed throughout the country. Now in their 35th year of continuous activity throughout the country, the IWC censuses represent one of the longest-running coordinated Italian study projects, certainly the first in terms of capillarity and regularity of geographical coverage. Waterbirds are a fundamental component of wetlands. Diversity and number of individuals provide crucial information on the state of health and environmental quality of the sites frequented, but also opportunities to enhance wetlands for recreational purposes in a sustainable manner. The protection, improvement and, where possible, restoration of Italian wetlands have implications that go well beyond the protection of the species they host, including, for example, the elimination of carbon from the atmosphere, protection from extreme weather events, and mitigation of the effects of climate change.
Regional and provincial calendars
Water birds represent a shared wealth among peoples: their long and complex migrations unite wetlands and people, regardless of cultural and political borders. The monitoring, organized this year from January 9 to 26, are planned according to regional or provincial calendars. The groups of ornithologists, mostly volunteers, participating in the project coordinate to distribute themselves in all the wetlands and simultaneously census the water birds present. The IWC censuses are essential for planning conservation and management actions of wetlands and their natural heritage: the data collected annually are used by our country to fulfill the periodic reporting requirements at European and national level (including the Barcelona Convention, Marine Strategy, Birds Directive), but also to draft or update action plans for endangered species, opinions and management plans for huntable or invasive species.
Ramsar Convention
The results are also used to identify wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. Twenty Italian wetland complexes today qualify as internationally important, but only half of the sites have a (very partial) designation under the Convention, and unfortunately none are currently recognized for the entire surface area occupied. (Source ISPRA – Photo A. Luchetta ISPRA – Flight of Dunlins Calidris alpina, Punta Sabbioni – VE)
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