GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - A long-term monitoring project on African Oystercatcher Haematopus moquini breeding success in parts of the Garden Route, conducted by the Lakes Bird Club, enables scientists to determine whether conservation efforts are positively influencing the species here.
This is according to a scientific article by Dr Mark Brown, conservation director of Discover Eden, entitled 'Long-term trends from citizen scientists: 24 years of breeding success data of African Oystercatchers Haematopus moquini in the Garden Route.
According to Brown, since the onset of the study in 1997/1998, there has been a steady increase in the number of breeding pairs at Knysna and Sedgefield, but not at Brenton-on-Sea. A similar increase in hatching success is recorded, with an overall increase in the number of fledglings per adult pair over the area throughout the study.
Collectively, this indicates that some local and national conservation efforts, such as the beach driving ban and awareness campaigns like #ShareTheShores, have been successful, leading to positive trends in these parameters for this species.
Brown says long-term data on breeding success in beach-nesting birds in southern Africa are scarce and citizen science projects have risen to the forefront of large dataset collection efforts globally, with several local projects helping scientists unpack long-term trends for species in southern Africa.
Brown's article highlights the usefulness of long-term datasets for corroborating outcomes from other large datasets, like the Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2. Contact Dr Mark Brown at brownma@ukzn.ac.za if you are interested in the complete report which is available as a PDF.
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