The history and future of NOWAC
During 22-25 September 2010, 26 ornithologists from Iceland, Sweden, Finland & Denmark, partners in the NordForsk funded NOWAC network, met at a workshop at Kalø, hosted by the National Environmental Research Institute at Aarhus University, Denmark. The workshop discussed current conservation issues and potential adverse and advantageous effects of climate change on duck populations in the Nordic/Baltic region. Three sub-groups discussed general issues, Mallard and Eider populations, respectively, and in plenum NOWAC decided to organise two scientific conferences:
October 2011: ‘Nordic Ducks in a Warming World’ – venue Øster Malma, Sweden.
April 2013: ‘Effects of a changing World on Migratory Waterbirds’ – venue Iceland.
The primary focus of the first conference will be on duck fly-way populations breeding, moulting, staging and/or wintering in the Nordic/Baltic region, and aim to:
- update their conservation status, identify our gaps in current knowledge about their numbers, site use, and site safeguard during all phases of their annual migratory cycles,
- explore to which extent short-stopping of duck populations in the Baltic region are sufficiently covered by current national and internationally coordinated monitoring programmes such as the International Waterbird Census (IWC),
- address for the first time through focused examples how expected effects of climate change, including warmer and wetter winters and summers, more frequent winter storms, changes in salinity of coastal areas due to changed river run-off patterns, and sea level rise, may impact on population dynamics, phenology and other migration behaviours, as well as habitat availability and energetics of duck populations.
The focus of the second conference will concentrate more specifically on climate change issues, developing upon themes initiated in the first conference, and will have a wider geographical scope, including both American and Eurasian perspectives.
Both conferences will also address applied aspects, in particular how international conventions, EU directives, national legislation and site-safeguard programmes resulting form these might need to be reshaped in order to appropriately monitor, manage and conserve duck populations in a globally warmed and changing World.
The Baltic-Wadden Sea Eider working group compiled new data collected over the 10 years since the last published population status (Desholm et al. paper). Current data confirm the worsening of this population’s already unfavourable conservation status, with widespread declines in breeding numbers throughout the range.
The Northwest European Mallard population working group compiled and contrasted patterns in population trends, bag- statistics and productivity from the Nordic Countries and Europe as a whole, concluding that the claimed decline in the population to which these ducks belong to is difficult to determine based on existing data. Contrasting trends amongst many measures confirmed the need for a new approach to monitoring and the need for further research.
The NOWAC Network will in the immediate future review the current status and gaps in knowledge for duck populations in the Nordic region, and present more detailed in-depth analysis for the Eider and Mallard populations.
The NOWAC steering committee is chaired by Tony Fox from NERI, Aarhus University, Denmark and comprises members from Sweden, Finland and Iceland. The Network currently involves scientific partners from University of Iceland and Vérkis (Iceland); Kristiansstad University and University of Lund (Sweden); Åbo Akademi University & Novia University of Applied Sciences, University of Helsinki, and Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute (Finland); and NERI,. The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research has recently been invited to join NOWAC. The Swedish Hunters Association and Dansk Jagtakademi are also associated partners.