Citizen science platforms reveal more resources needed to protect birds in Germany

Member states of the European Union are obliged to designate Special Protection Areas (SPAs) as part of the Natura 2000 network. These areas are designed to guarantee the preservation and restoration of bird populations. However, due to the paucity of data about rare species, it was not known how well these areas worked. Researchers at the University of Göttingen and Dachverband Deutscher Avifaunisten (DDA) developed citizen science platforms as a new data source to evaluate the effectiveness of the 742 protected areas for birds across Germany.

This research shows that although these areas are well placed, their effectiveness varies greatly. When protected areas were compared with unprotected sites that showed similar geographical characteristics, only a few species thrived better inside the SPAs. The results were published in the journal Biological Conservation.

Citizen science platforms enable thousands of people to contribute to research with their observations—whether a single blackbird at a bird feeder or a long list of species seen during a day trip to the seashore. The study used the platform www.ornitho.de, which contains more than 90 million records. The advantage of such platforms is that they provide almost complete coverage of the country.

However, the poorly standardized and unsystematic data collection process means that there are multiple sources of error. For this reason, the researchers limited their analysis just to particularly valuable, complete lists that provide information on all birds registered during an observation. To find out how the protected areas fared, the researchers compared them with areas that were not protected but had similar natural features.

The analyses showed that 62% of the species studied were more likely to be found in a Special Protection Area than outside it. Dr. Femke Pflüger, first author of the study, based at the DDA and Göttingen University’s Department of Conservation Biology, highlights these positive findings: “Conservationists obviously did a good job in selecting the right areas in the 2000s.”

However, a comparison over time showed more mixed results and she adds, “For the period 2012 to 2022, we were only able to identify positive developments in protected areas for 17% of the species. These concerned mainly meadow birds such as black-tailed godwits and curlews, which have benefited from targeted habitat management.”

For 83% of the species, there was either no measurable effect or the development was less favorable inside the protected areas than outside. The study also defined situations as ‘effective protection’ if the probability of finding a species decreased over time, both inside and outside the protected areas, but to a lesser extent within them.

Professor Johannes Kamp, Head of the Department of Conservation Biology at the University of Göttingen who led the analyses, says, “This shows that designating a Special Protection Area is not enough to stop a downward trend. The areas need better staffing and funding to restore habitats and to target measures specifically to support endangered species.”

Dr. Jakob Katzenberger, who coordinates the DDA’s research, is delighted that thousands of citizens contributed: “We were able to show that collecting biodiversity data from online platforms has huge potential. It was possible to track large-scale changes in birdlife really effectively.”