International Species Action Plan for the Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola photo: Gerold Dobler Prepared by: On behalf of the European Commission International Species Action Plan for theAquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola Recommended Citation: BirdLife International 2008. International Species Action Plan for the Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola. Updated version, 2010 The present action plan was commissioned by the European Commission and prepared by BirdLife International as subcontractor to the “N2K Group” in the frame of Service Contract N#070307/2007/488316/SER/B2 “Technical and scientific support in relation to the implementation of the 92/43 ‘Habitats’ and 79/409 ‘Birds’ Directives”. It has been updated in 2010 by the same authors to be used as International Species Action Plan under the CMS Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Conservation Measures for the Aquatic Warbler (Acrocephalus paludicola). The update only aimed to include additional identified range states of the species and to update population figures. Recommended actions have not been updated. Compiled by Dr MARTIN FLADE BirdLife International Aquatic Warbler Conservation Team (Chairman) Landesumweltamt Brandenburg Tramper Chaussee 2 D – 16225 Eberswalde Germany Phone:+49 – 3334 – 66 2713 Fax: +49 – 3334 – 66 2650 [email protected] and LARS LACHMANN Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Country Programmes Officer European Programmes & International Biodiversity Policy Department The RSPB, UK Headquarters The Lodge, Sandy, SG19 2DL, Bedfordshire, UK Tel: +44-1767 69-3540 (direct dial) Fax: +44-1767 683211, www.rspb.org.uk 2 Contributors: Poland: Lars Lachmann (with Jaroslaw Krogulec), Germany Martin Flade (with Jochen Bellebaum and Franziska Tanneberger) Hungary Zsolt Vegvari Lithuania Zydrunas Preiksa Latvia Oskars Keiss UK Leigh Lock (with Lars Lachmann) Belgium Wouter Faveyts and Norbert Roothaert France Arnaud Le Nevé Spain Carlos Zumalacárregui Martínez Bulgaria Petar Iankov Portugal Jose Tavares Netherlands Bernd de Bruijn Luxembourg Gilles Biver non EU countries: Belarus Viktar Fenchuk Ukraine Anatoly Poluda Russia Mikhail Kalyakin Senegal Ibrahima Diop The Aquatic Warbler Conservation Team The Aquatic Warbler Conservation Team was officially founded in 1998 at Brodowin/ Germany. The AWCT acts under the auspices of BirdLife International and is an informal association of researchers and conservationists working on the Aquatic Warbler, coming from all breeding range states and some stopover countries. Currently, colleagues from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Germany, United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Spain and Senegal are actively working in the Team. The chairman is Martin Flade, Germany. Dr. Martin Flade Landesumweltamt Brandenburg (LUA) Abt. GR Tramper Chaussee 2 D - 16225 Eberswalde Germany - Deutschland e-mail: [email protected] 3 Milestones in the Production of the Plan • First Aquatic Warbler workshop was held in 1993 at Ruda Milicka (Poland) helping the preparation of the first EU action plan (Heredia et al. 1996) • Second Aquatic Warbler Workshop took place from 30 March to 1 April 1998 at Brodowin (Germany) and prepared update of the action plan • Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Conservation Measures for the Aquatic Warbler (MoU) was concluded on April 30, 2003 in Minsk (Belarus), annexed to it was a revised version of the Aquatic Warbler Species Action Plan prepared in 1998 • First meeting of the Range States of the CMS Aquatic Warbler MoU took place on June 24-27, 2006 at Criewen (Germany) and prepared an unformal update of the 2003 action plan. • The current revised draft action plan underwent the following consultations • Draft 1.0 sent to all Contributors and published online: June, 2008 • Revision of implementation: July 2008 • Workshop: 10 September, 2008 • Draft 2.0 sent to all Contributors and published online in September 2008. • Final draft prepared in November 2008. • Final version of the action plan published on EU Commission website in 2009. • Plan updated to include additional range states, to be accepted as new action plan under the CMS Aquatic Warbler MoU in May 2010. 4 Table of contents 0 - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY........................................................................................................................... 7 1 - BIOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT .................................................................................................................. 9 Biogeographic populations .............................................................................................................................. 9 Distribution throughout the annual cycle ...................................................................................................... 9 Habitat requirements ...................................................................................................................................... 9 Life history .................................................................................................................................................... 10 Population size and trend ............................................................................................................................. 11 2 - THREATS ................................................................................................................................................... 15 General overview of threats ........................................................................................................................... 15 List of critical and important threats ............................................................................................................ 15 Population Viability Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 17 Problem tree - Legend: (solid frame – high impact; normal – medium impact; dashed – low impact) .......... 18 3 - RECENT CONSERVATION MEASURES ........................................................................................... 19 4 - POLICIES AND LEGISLATION RELEVANT FOR MANAGEMENT. ......................................... 27 International conservation and legal status of the species ............................................................................ 27 National policies, legislation and ongoing activities ..................................................................................... 27 5 – FRAMEWORK FOR ACTIONS ............................................................................................................. 29 Goal ............................................................................................................................................................... 29 Objectives ...................................................................................................................................................... 29 Results .......................................................................................................................................................... 29 Actions .......................................................................................................................................................... 30 5 – REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................................ 35 ANNEX 1 ...................................................................................................................................................... 39 Importance of threats at the population/group of countries level .................................................................. 39 ANNEX 2 ...................................................................................................................................................... 40 Important Bird Areas for the species and their status................................................................................... 40 ANNEX 3 ...................................................................................................................................................... 58 National legal status ..................................................................................................................................... 58 Recent conservation measures ...................................................................................................................... 59 Ongoing monitoring schemes for the species ................................................................................................ 60 Overview of the coverage of the species in networks of sites with legal protection status ............................ 61 ANNEX 4 ...................................................................................................................................................... 63 Applicability of actions per country .............................................................................................................. 63 Detailed description of actions per country .................................................................................................. 67 5 Geographical scope of the action plan The scope of this action plan covers the whole range of the species, significant parts of which fall in Europe and the European Union. However, due to the fact that the majority of its breeding population is found in neighbouring to