Welcome to WWT’s waterbird monitoring website

Monitoring is the foundation of effective conservation. Explore this website to find out more, and how WWT supports this both in the UK and globally.

In order to understand where valuable conservation resources should be used, we need to know which species are most in need of conservation action – which are rare, and which are declining.

Monitoring of abundance and other factors provides us with the information we need to be able to determine the conservation status of individual waterbird species and populations, and therefore make effective decisions about where to invest limited resources for conservation action. Monitoring of the same factors also allows us to assess the effect of conservation actions – such as whether we are successful in reversing a decline or restoring a former range.

WWT’s monitoring team supports global waterbird monitoring by organising and undertaking surveys that collect these data, by supporting the assessment of conservation status, and by transferring relevant skills to organisations working in other regions of global importance for waterbirds.

This work is a large collaborative effort involving governmental and non-governmental organisations as well as many thousands of volunteers. If you would like to be part of this effort, visit Get involved.