ORNIS HUNGARICA 12-13: 1-2 (2003)

Preface

In late March of 2001, the 15th International Conference of the European Bird Census
Council, the European umbrella organisation of national bodies concerned with bird census,
atlas and monitoring work, took place at the Hotel Park in Nyíregyháza-Sóstó,
Eastern Hungary. The Conference was organised by Magyar Madártani és
Természetvédelmi Egyesület (MME/BirdLife Hungary) in cooperation with the College
of Nyíregyháza.

The main theme of the Conference was "Monitoring for Nature Conservation", which
was introduced in the Chairman's address by David Gibbons. The accelerating, mostly
adverse changes in our environment (Climate change, farming practice, development,
pollutions,…) increase the importance of monitoring the influence of these factors on
biodiversity, based on standard and proper methodologies, frequent and international
data collection. Monitoring of birds is one the most promising opportunities for this very
important task, by the long tradition of using and developing adequate methodologies by
the nationally and internationally organised bird monitoring schemes and by the contribution
of thousands of voluntaries observers across Europe. This EBCC Conference had
the opportunity to discuss in detail the methodological, practical and organisation issues
of the Pan-European Bird Monitoring on the basis of the results of the work done nationally
and internationally since the last Conference, hold in Cottbus, Germany, in 1998.
The five plenary talks, 55 oral presentations and 58 posters presented by the 144 participants
from 30 European countries and from USA and South Africa in the following
themes provided vital opportunity to discuss these important issues in bird monitoring:
- Pan-European Bird Monitoring
- Site monitoring in Wetlands
- Atlas studies
- Monitoring of species
- Integrated Population Monitoring
- Monitoring of wetland birds
- Site monitoring
- Monitoring and conservation
- Farmland birds
- Monitoring methods
- Survey and monitoring of threatened birds

During the organisation of the 15th EBCC Conference, the active participation of
each European country was essential to its success. We are very grateful to the Ministry
of the Flemish Community (AMINAL/NA/2000/Intern.Agreements - 4) and the the
MME/BirdLife Hungary for providing financial support to our Eastern European colleagues.
This assistance was very important because of the absence of other sources.
We are grateful that the following organisations provided help during conference:
- Ministry of the Flemish Community, Belgium (AMINAL/NA/2000/Intern.Agreements - 4)
- MME/BirdLife Hungary
- College of Nyíregyháza, Hungary
- BirdLife International
- European Bird Census Council
- Upper Tisza Foundation, Hungary
- Ecotours Ltd, Hungary
- Ecotone Ltd, Poland

The scientific programme of the Conference was prepared jointly by David Gibbons,
Tibor Szép, Ward Hagemeijer, Richard Gregory and András Báldi.
The conference was prepared and managed by the local organising committee formed
by the members of the local chapter of MME/BirdLife Hungary: Zsolt Nagy, Norbert
Domina, Regina Domina, Ágnes Szomolya, Károly Nagy, Miklós Tóth, Zoltán D. Szabó,
Béla Habarics and Walter Wettstein†. We were very glad of their help.
We thank to the session chairs of the conference (David Gibbons, Richard Gregory,
Henk Sierdsema, Martin Flade, Ward Hagemeijer, Hans Oelke, John R. Sauer, Tomasz
Wesolowski, Des Callaghan, Risto A. Väisänen, Goetz Rheinwald, Alexander
Mischenko, Collin Bibby, Jeremy Greenwood, David Noble, Les Underhill, Melanie F.
Heath, Norbert Schäffer) for providing help in the editing of the submitted manuscript.
The proceedings were edited by Tibor Szép, Mike Blair (English editing) and András
Báldi. The technical editing and the printing were carried out by Zsófia Dohán and
Tamás Péchy.

We hope that the conference and the articles of the conference proceedings contribute
to the development of the bird monitoring and accelerate the development of Pan-
European Bird Monitoring.

Tibor Szép
Mike Blair
András Báldi