Announcement of AWC 2012

Keeping in line with the practise since several years, the dates for Asian Waterbird Census-2012 would be between 14th and 29th January 2012. This period would provide us three weekends and some local holidays to conduct the work. I request all the National and Regional Coordinators to urgently communicate this to your networks and volunteers in order to conduct waterbird census during these dates.

I once again request all the AWC volunteers to actively participate in AWC-2012. Your contribution gets multiplied many times over across the Asia and helps generate a critical dataset that will continue to benefit the conservation of waterbirds in the region. Importantly, kindly don't forget to request for completed count and site forms to be sent to the national/sub-national coordinators for verification and compilation of the data.

Background

 The AWC covers the region of Asia, from Afghanistan eastwards to Japan, Southeast Asia and Australasia. AWC runs parallel to other international census of waterbirds in Africa, Europe, West Asia and Neotropics under the umbrella of the International Waterbird Census (IWC).

Information from the AWC contributes to the identification and monitoring of wetlands of international and national importance. It also assists decision-makers in designating wetlands to the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran 1971), protecting threatened species and assessing values of wetlands. The data feeds into an international programme to maintain an overview of the population size, status and trends of waterbirds.

The census has been an ongoing effort since 1987. It is conducted by a large network of volunteers working throughnational coordinators. The AWC network is coordinated by Wetlands International. The Census has been annually organised during the second and third weeks of January. More information on the AWC can be found in the AWC Census Overview.

The AWC is carried out each January.  We encourage volunteers to participate in the census and report their data to the national coordinator in the earliest for compiling of national and regional reports.

Count forms

Contact the AWC Coordinators

The list of coordinators can be downloaded here.

AWC Newsletter & publications