Wadden Sea Ecosystem 20: Migratory Waterbirds in the Wadden Sea 1980 - 2000

The results of the twenty-year period 1980 - 2000 of the Joint Monitoring on Migratory Birds in the Wadden Sea (JMMB), which is carried out in the framework of the Trilateral Monitoring and Assessment Program (TMAP), are presented in the 20th issue of the Wadden Sea Ecosystem series.

This report succeeds the two reports on joint activities in the field of migratory bird monitoring in 1992/93 (Rösner et al., 1994) as well as in 1993/94 (Poot et al., 1996). In 1994, the evaluation of international Wadden Sea birds counts in the period 1980 - 1991 was published by Meltofte et al., 1994. Besides these issues on results of migratory birds monitoring, a review on important and potential roosting sites in the Wadden Sea were published by the JMMB in 2003. The results of all these reports and further recent data have been taken into account in the compilation of trends in this report.

The present report entails four contributions. In the first and main one, the JMMB gives an overview of numbers and trends 1980 - 2000 for all 34 species of the JMMB-program. Regarding selected species respectively species groups - such as Barnacle Geese and Dark-bellied Brent Geese, Curlews as well as shellfish-eating birds - specific aspects related to habitat use, hunting and mussel and cockle fishery are discussed in more detail by different authors in the following three additional contributions of the issue.

Citation: Blew, J. and Südbeck, P. (Eds.) (2005) Migratory Waterbirds in the Wadden Sea 1980 – 2000. Wadden Sea Ecosystem No. 20. Common Wadden Sea Secretariat, Trilateral Monitoring and Assessment Group, Joint Monitoring Group of Migratory Birds in the Wadden Sea, Wilhelmshaven, Germany.