The Paddyfield Pipit in Britain Alexander C. Lees, Chris Batty and Christopher J. McInerny, on behalf of BOURC

Great White Egrets in England: tipping the balance Alison Morgan, Alison Blaney, Andrew Bloomfield, Leigh Lock and Graham White

The Pallid Harrier in Europe: a tentative interpretation of the change in status

The East Atlantic Flyway stretches from Northeast Canada to North Siberia in Russia, southward along the coastlines of the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Eastern Atlantic Ocean all the way to South Africa. Many waterbird populations use this flyway during their breeding and non-breeding sea-sons. The Wadden Sea Flyway Initiative started an integrated monitoring programme together with Wetlands International and BirdLife International. Thanks to this programme we can document flyway trends for more than 80 waterbird populations of 66 species, based on bird counts at thousands of sites. Environmental data, including the presence of pressures and also the extent of conservation measures taken, have been collated from 115 important coastal sites in both Africa and Europe. Besides results from the ongoing general monitoring, this report brings together specific accounts about regions and sites (Russian Arctic, Wadden Sea, North Africa, Banc d’ Arguin, Bijagos archipelago, urban wetlands in Dakar and Lagos and coastal wetlands in Angola) and thematic chapters on the importance of monitoring vital rates of waterbirds and the differences in flyway trends based on non-breeding January data or breeding bird data. Generally, the status of flyway populations using the coastal EAF appears relatively favourable, but with notable exceptions. In the long term, almost twice as many populations show an increasing or stable trend than a declining one. However in particular, arctic-breeding waders migrating over long distances show on average more negative trends than other taxonomic and functional groups. At the sites within the EAF used by waterbirds many anthropogenic pressures occur. The extent to which these pressures directly influence the conservation status of individual populations along the flyway, cannot be assessed from the current data, but fishing, agriculture, disturbance from humans, waste pollution and urbanisation have all large influences. Also, the flyway is already under significant impact from climatic change, and this is bound to intensify in the coming decades