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Shorebird monitoring in Australia: a

successful long-term collaboration

among citizen scientists,

governments and researchers

Birgita D. Hansen, Robert S. Clemens, Eduardo Gallo-Cajiao,

Micha V. Jackson, Richard T. Kingsford, Grainne S. Maguire, Golo

Maurer, David A. Milton, Danny I. Rogers, Dan R. Weller, Michael

A. Weston, Eric J. Woehler and Richard A. Fuller

Summary

From its beginnings in the 1960s, shorebird monitoring in Australia has grown
into a national effort generating high-quality information about a large group of
migratory and non-migratory waterbirds. Robust information on trends, combined
with detailed demographic monitoring and studies of bird movements, has
revealed drastic declines, particularly among the migratory species. From the start,
monitoring focused on a broad ecological assemblage, meaning that the reasons for