Scenarios for protecting European avian redistributions (SPEAR)

SPEAR  will:

• identify gaps in the current European land and marine protected area networks for the conservation for threatened species and critical habitats and assess the resilience of the protected area networks under different future scenarios for environmental change.
• develop best practice guidelines to inform managers of protected areas about improving implementation of conservation actions to mitigate adverse impacts of climate change on birds.
• focus on huntable waterbird species, and the regulations needed to ensure sustainable harvest under climate change.
• evaluate the benefits of created and restored wetlands for biodiversity, including their recreational value, the scientific results from which will guide development of best practice guidelines for future wetland restoration projects.

The SLU researchers is focusing on restored and created wetlands

At the Department of Ecology, SLU, Professor Tomas Pärt and Post-Doc Ineta Kačergytė, together with SPEAR collaborators, is focusing on local wetland management and its conservation benefits for birds, but also other parts of wetland biodiversity and ecosystem functionality.

Currently, we are working on a project in which we evaluate habitat restoration measures at different landscape scales within the context of single large or several small areas (SLOSS). In short, we are examining how wetland size contributes to species density and population size at different spatial scales, and comparing this with the scales at which conservation management actions are usually taken.

Other planned/ongoing projects:

We will look at time effects since the restoration of shallow eutrophic lakes, which may indicate which restoration measures work for more years than others, and if and when repeated restoration measures are needed to maintain higher biodiversity estimates.

Secondly, we will investigate the effectiveness of wetland creation for biodiversity not only for the target taxa such as birds and amphibians, but also for other taxa including insects, other invertebrates, fish and plants. This project is already in progress. Practical work was conducted in spring/summer 2024 in collaboration with Turku University and Hushållningssällskapet. 

Read more at SPEAR´s website

Would you be interested in conducting your Bachelor's or Master's thesis research within these projects? Please contact us!

Facts about SPEAR

The two goals of the collaborative project SPEAR (“Scenarios for Protecting European Avian Redistributions”) are to evaluate changes in bird abundance and distributions in Europe, and to develop improved policy tools to meet new targets set under the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework under the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity. SPEAR is a 1.6M Euro project funded by the BiodivProtect call from EU Biodiversa+.

The SPEAR team comprises an international consortium of scientists from eight research institutions in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Spain and six conservation groups, including the secretariats of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), and the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement (AEWA) both affiliated to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Wetlands International, Stichting BirdLife Europe, the Danish Hunters’ Association, and the European Land Conservation Network (Eurosite). Representatives participated in the kick-off meeting to determine priorities and plan research activities for the 3-year project (2023-2025). Collaboration between scientists, conservation partners and stakeholders will ensure a strong knowledge base that will inform the policy processes much needed for effective biodiversity conservation in Europe.