Conservation: An eye on endangered species: Joanna Gibbon reports on the work of Birdlife International, which has been battling to preserve birds since 1922

WITH migratory birds on the move to their winter habitats, bird enthusiasts may be unaware that it was the near demise of the Trumpeter swan and the Eskimo curlew which prompted in 1922 the creation of the first international conservation body, the International Council for Bird Preservation, recently renamed Birdlife International. 'Migratory birds have been catalytic in forming co-operation between countries and Birdlife formed to further this,' explains Dr Christoph Imboden, Birdlife's director-general.

Birdlife, which has voting partners from 65 countries around the world, including the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, has encouraged a change in perception of migratory birds. 'They do not belong just to one country, you cannot take the selfish view that they are just yours,' says Dr Imboden, who feels that migratory birds, while facing many dangers, are less globally at risk than some non-migratory species. 'There are about 9,000 bird species in the world, 1,000 of which are classified as globally threatened - of this figure only about 100 are migratory,' says Dr Imboden. Their advantage, he says, is that they have high population numbers and wide distribution areas, whereas some tropical birds - there are many more unique species in the tropics than anywhere else - have one small distribution area of perhaps a few kilometres.

Awareness and action, on a global scale, are Birdlife's aims. Until the late 1970s the organisation, staffed by amateur volunteers, acted as a co-ordinating body for like-minded people throughout the world to exchange ideas. Since 1980 it has geared up and now has offices in the United States, Ecuador, Indonesia and Belgium.

Its development programme is three-pronged: research, advocacy and field action, much of which takes place in developing countries because, says Dr Imboden, there is no point in duplicating the work of already effective conservation organisations in wealthier countries.

Their research, which provides information for worldwide bird organisations and agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, is highly accurate, says Dr Imboden, because birds are so well studied. 'More is known about bird numbers, habitats, distribution than any other animal or plant,' says Dr Imboden.

In their ongoing global biodiversity study they have been able to pinpoint priority areas for global conservation through studying the birds. Concentrating on areas rich in endemic species, those only occurring in one country and mainly living in tropical forests, Birdlife has found that birds are a sensitive indicator to environmental change and a usefully quick diagnostic tool. 'They are high up in the food chain and the effect of pesticides, for example, is much more dramatic at the high end of the food chain. If one or several bird species are declining in an area then other plants and animal species there will also be declining. Deforestation is of great concern,' says Dr Imboden.

Birdlife is presently creating field programmes in Indonesia, which has the highest number of unique species in the world. Such work demands diplomacy, imagination, patience and the involvement of everyone, from politicians to local people.

'The primary concerns of politicians in many developing countries is to feed their people - bird conservation is not high on their agenda,' says Dr Imboden.

Integrated community-based projects work best. On the island of Bhali, Birdlife's five-year-old scheme to increase numbers of the highly endangered white Bhali starling, highly prized as cage birds, is having an effect: since 1989 starling numbers have risen from about 16 to 46. Two factors led to their decline - the pet market and the loss of dry forest, their habitat. Birdlife, ironically, collaborated with people who owned captive starlings and placed some of the birds back into the wild; they helped the national park keepers to stop people thieving and set up a local awareness programme.

Often the programmes - which stretch from South America, Egypt, Kenya, Thailand and Vietnam - seem far removed from the birds themselves. One in Cameroon is encouraging villagers to cultivate the land without encroaching into the forest and to harvest honey from the forest, on a sustainable basis. 'The birds don't play a direct part but the area is always chosen because of its high number of endemic species,' explains Dr Imboden.

Agricultural policy and farming methods are top of the agenda for Wings Across Europe, another Birdlife project where wellestablished bird protection societies are helping Central and Eastern European countries to start their own national organisations. Birds in these countries are endangered because of bad pollution and the possibility of traditional methods of farming being replaced by more mechanised ones.

Depressingly, even in Britain, modern farming methods are largely to blame for the recent reduction of skylark and partridge numbers. 'It's puzzling: even though people and politicians are more aware, it doesn't seem to have had an impact on the environment,' says Dr Imboden.

Birdlife International, Wellbrook Court, Girton Road, Cambridge CB3 0NA. Tel: 0223 277318.

(Photograph omitted)