The European Partnership Animal Health & Welfare

The creation of an inventory of wildlife population monitoring programmes in Europe is critical to identify knowledge gaps and constraints, as well as research needs and priorities, for an international harmonized approach.

The European Partnership Animal Health & Welfare (EUP AH&W) includes over 100 Research and funding Organizations from 24 EU and non-EU European countries, which will provide significant research-based advice to competent authorities in the EU on the fields of Animal Health & Welfare research in Europe. One out of its 17 Joint Internal Projects works on setting up European wildlife networks, based on existing wildlife disease and population surveillance and reporting systems. It aims to describe and evaluate methods and systems, including databases, for the collection and analysis of wildlife populations data in Europe, such as distribution and abundance of selected wildlife species important in pathogen transmission and/or maintenance, including invasive/alien species, building further on the work of ENETWILD, the EOW and others. 

The EUP AH&W will create an inventory, describe, and evaluate wildlife population monitoring programmes and data taking place in Europe. This will be the basis for identifying the limitations, needs (including socio-economic), critical knowledge gaps and constraints in existing wildlife population monitoring programs in Europe. This activity will be based on a questionnaire focused on wildlife monitoring systems in EU MS and other European countries, including regional, national (also regional) and international wildlife monitoring systems in Europe. 

As inclusion criteria, for the purposes of this questionnaire:

• “Wildlife” includes vertebrate animals -mammals, birds-, including also marine mammals, reptiles (also sea turtles) and amphibians, but not fish for now.
• It addresses wildlife monitoring programs with at least 4 years of duration.
• For one single site monitoring programs (local), they should only be included if the period of monitoring exceeds 10 years and exceptional quality data are collected (e.g.; reliable density data, biological research stations, etc).

In many cases, wildlife monitoring programs are coordinated over European countries, or over regions within a country, and therefore:

1. In case a national program on wildlife monitoring is executed by regions within the country, co-ordinately, with an harmonized approach and sharing data or results, we recommend to fill one single questionnaire (as one single program) co-ordinately at national level, either by the ministry (central institution) or by any regional representative.
2. In case regional programs are executed by regions in parallel within a country, but unharmonized, and data or results are not shared, they are not interoperable, we recommend to fill one questionnaire per region (either ministry or central institution filling all of them, or regional representatives).
3. Finally, in case an international wildlife monitoring program is executed co-ordinately by national nodes in respective Countries (e.g., bird monitoring coordinated by international organizations), with an harmonized approach that makes possible data sharing (interoperable), please, responders should fill one questionnaire co-ordinately describe the program at international level (by international organization representative, as one single international monitoring program). The questionnaire is flexible enough to introduce the most relevant Country-related differences (see columns for notes). However, it is also possible to fill one questionnaire per country by respective national representatives (one country, one monitoring program), for which we ask you to distribute the questionnaire among national nodes.

The EUP AH&W presented this questionnaire in a recent webinar, which you can access through this link:

To access directly to the video contents of the webinar related to the EUP AH&W:

• From min. 20´25´´ to 30´20´´ you can see a presentation on the EUP AH&W action related to wildlife (also, the pdf of the presentation here: Link to the pdf )
• From min. 30´20’’ to 50´30´´ we specifically present the questionnaire (also, the pdf of the presentation here: Link to the pdf )

The questionnaire (as an excel document) is available at: Questionnaire_to_Countries_Standardized and needs to be returned by 15/06/2024.

Please, send back the filled questionnaire by email to the specific EUP AH&W contact partner indicated below. They are also, responsible to continue further contact, coordination, and support responders from respective countries and international monitoring frameworks.

Once the received questionnaires are analysed (September 2024), The EUP AH&W will organize a participatory workshop in the second half of 2024 to present the results and discuss on identified wildlife monitoring needs not or insufficiently covered in Europe, critical knowledge gaps and constraints.