At the moment, a scale up project proposal is currently under development and will be submitted to the GEF/SGP strategic projects window (up to US$150,000). If this application is successful, we would then use the momentum and support provided by that grant to explore up-scaling to a medium-sized GEF grant
Local communities: The data available is not the property of BirdLife Botswana alone, since the participating communities have access to all the data which they could then use for reporting to the DWNP (or Land Board, Technical Advisory Committees etc) on the status of birds and biodiversity in their concessions. The platform provided by the Environmental Information System should facilitate this process.
National-level: The results from the count reports already influence several policies and their implementation, e.g. game birds quotas and the control of the Red-billed Quelea (see above). As the dataset grows, there should be more scope to influence even more policies, for instance on invasive alien species, whose expansion the monitoring networks should be able to record. The data could also be pooled at the regional level with those from neighbouring countries with Bird Population Monitoring schemes (e.g. South Africa), to provide information on birds and biodiversity at a regional scale ? ultimately, this could even be done on a continental scale or globally, which would influence for instance policy decisions on bird migratory routes and pathways. Presently, the reports produced out of the four BPM counts provide synthesized information, in a format that can be used by decision-makers to influence politicians to find suitable biodiversity management solutions
Planning non gef grant
Some of the support elaborated in the section sustainability post GEF/SGP funding, does qualify as up-scaling through non-GEF grants; however, in the immediate future, up-scaling is largely planned through the GEF/SGP strategic projects window (and subsequently the medium-sized GEF grant).
Project sustainability
The BPM programme is a monitoring programme and this requires continuous data collection and with high repeatability by the participants to achieve the objective of conserving Botswana?s birds and biodiversity. Therefore fundraising is key to make this a reality. To this end, BirdLife Botswana has secured long-term technical backstopping support (e.g. advice on data analysis and dissemination, strategies for continuous engagement with stakeholders etc) from the RSPB (BirdLife partner in the UK). While the RSPB also provide some limited direct financial support, this is largely towards salary support for the BPM coordinator. This means that other funding needs to be mobilized to cover aspects of the project. In efforts to ensure project sustainability post GEF/SGP funding, several strategies have been adopted, including: (1) lobbying for the BPM to be embedded within DWNP?s staff core mandate (particularly within parks, and their environs, DWNP staff lead data collection efforts); (2) additional technical support is provided by DEA (including GIS support and map production, and information dissemination through the Environment Information System); (3) several other government agencies (e.g. Dept of Forestry and Range Resources and Dept of Crop production), as well as the private sector (largely tour operators) and CBOs also provide logistical support to the project, drastically cutting the operating costs. Consequently, the majority of the additional resources BirdLife has had to mobilise has been for recruitment/training/feedback workshops and production of publicity materials, and these have been sought from other on-going BirdLife projects (e.g. see the budget report, where the ongoing BirdLife Botswana project Strategic Partnerships to Improve the Financial and Operational Sustainability of Protected Areas has provided a lot of co-funding). Nonetheless, we also continue to fundraise for other funding to enable us up-scale this project, including working on GEF/SGP Strategic Project concept for submission to GEF/SGP headquarters. The BPM forms a key component of BirdLife Botswana?s 2013?2020 Strategic Plan, and thus the organization will continue prioritizing this flagship programme.
Linkages gef projects
The ongoing BirdLife Botswana medium-sized project Strategic Partnerships to Improve the Financial and Operational Sustainability of Protected Areas is the largest GEF project that this BPM project has largely linked with.
Notable Community Participation
a) A major focus of the project at the outset will be a series of workshops to engage with community participants (i.e. Community Escort Guides) to discuss the concept of Common Bird Monitoring and its relevance to community based natural resource management. The aims of the workshops will be:
? To identify key interested participants
? To discuss participants? expectations from their involvement to make sure they are not disappointed
? To provide the skills necessary to enable them to participate
? To discuss and choose appropriate modalities for institutionalising common bird monitoring in existing community natural resources monitoring activities
? To show that common bird monitoring is an enjoyable worthwhile activity
? To emphasise that small individual contributions when taken collectively make a powerful tool for conserving birds (?)
Capacity - Building Component
b) Capacity building for participating CBOs will be in the form of training for common bird identification and bird monitoring methods. Good training is an essential part of a successful Bird Population Monitoring scheme. All participants must be adequately trained to ensure high quality data are collected. They will learn how to use the standardised survey forms to record data, how to identify birds, and how to conduct the transects to collect the required data.
The capacity of BirdLife Botswana will be improved with this project by strengthening the branches in the districts to support national bird conservation and monitoring projects. BirdLife Botswana members and volunteers will receive training in Common Bird Monitoring during the workshops conducted in the Districts.
Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods
c) The targeted CBOs depend entirely on the natural resources in their Controlled Hunting Areas. This project will provide a monitoring tool that will give a measure of the general health of their CHA, and this in turn impacts directly on the value of the area for photographic tourism. Communities are obliged under their lease agreement to undertake monitoring in their concessions and this project will actually assist them to do this.
Gender Focus
d) The project will be gender sensitive in terms of selecting participants at the workshops by asking communities to encourage equal numbers of men and women to attend. The project is not gender-biased, and anyone with the interest can participate, irrespective of their gender.
Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment
e) One of the outputs of the project will be a Communication Plan for networking with participants and other stakeholders.
Relevant media (e.g. TV, magazine articles, brochures, posters) will be utilised to promote the project and its importance to environmental conservation, including the wider public.
Policy Impact
f) The Wild Bird Index that will result from the Common Bird Monitoring project will give a scientific measure of Botswana?s biodiversity. The data will be available for government departments and ministries, the private sector, NGOs and the general public to influence policies related to biodiversity management and conservation. In Europe, for example, a drastic decline in farmland birds was detected using Common Bird Monitoring and this revealed that the Common Agricultural Policy was having a serious negative impact on biodiversity ? this led to public pressure on European Governments to change the Common Agricultural Policy. In the same way, this project could influence policy in Botswana.
Inovative Financial Mechanisms
g) Mobilising ?citizen scientists? for such a large country-wide initiative has only been done once in Botswana before (see below), the assumption always having been that biodiversity monitoring is the domain of government or select specialised institutions. The only exception to date has been the Botswana Bird Atlas project (under the auspices of BirdLife Botswana ? then known as the Botswana Bird Club) where hundreds of volunteers recorded birds by Quarter Degree Square throughout the country to produce accurate distribution maps for every known bird species in the country. This scientifically rigorous, milestone publication was done at minimal direct cost, due to the thousands of person-hours of fieldwork that were donated by the volunteers from all walks of life. The same applies to this project ? to pay individuals to undertake a country-wide project of this nature would be prohibitively expensive ? instead, seed money is all that is required to motivate people with an interest, who are based at localities throughout the country. The uniqueness of this aspect cannot be overemphasised, and the huge cost-savings that will result are as real as any other financial mechanism where money actually changes hands.
Replication of project activities
the project activities will be replicated in the future. This is because to have data collected over 10, 20 or 30 years there has to be a systematic way of data collection, with continual support offered to the participants to collect data, and with the organization continuously providing incentives for participants, and promoting the programme and its sustainability. Consequently, the activities started during this GEF/SGP-funded phase will continue to be replicated as we expand the spatial coverage of the BPM in Botswana.
Project Results
The project objectives are listed below, as well as an indication of how well each of them was achieved.
Objective 1: to develop a Wild Bird Index for Botswana showing bird population trends over time.
Significant progress has been made towards this objective, as epitomized by more than 350 volunteers undertaking 251 transects (see Fig. 1). Nonetheless, this objective?s full achievement will be in the medium and long term (e.g. 10 to 30 years) when the accumulated dataset would be robust enough to provide long-term bird population trends. In the interim, data from the four counts so far undertaken only suffices to extract preliminary trends for some species.
Objective 2: to show that changes in the overall condition of ecosystems can be used by decision-makers to influence politicians to find suitable biodiversity management solutions.
There is data available (from November 2010, February and November 2011 and February 2012 counts) for use by government departments and ministries, private sector, NGOs and the general public to infer the short-term (and preliminary) bird population trends, with some of the trends being of relevance to policy or biodiversity (and bird) management. For example, after the February 2012 count BirdLife Botswana pooled all the bird data to calculate an abundance trend index for game birds (francolins, sandgrouse, guinea fowl etc) and Red-billed Quelea, in order to share with DWNP (who issue game bird hunting quotas) and the Department of Crop Production within the Ministry of Agriculture (who coordinate Red-billed Quelea outbreak controls) preliminary analyses regarding trends for these groups of birds. See www.birdlifebotswana.org.bw for a copy of this report. Subsequent work will build on this work, and include that the BPM datasets forms a key component of Botswana?s Environmental Information System, see www.eis.gov.bw for information on this programme.
Objective 3: to increase levels of community participation through building the appropriate capacity.
Of the 350 BPM participants, about 150 (i.e. 43%) are CBO representatives from different regions in Botswana, and they have been part of the series of training workshops held. Thus, this objective has been met. However, we will continue engaging with the CBOs not only to strengthen their capacity for surveying birds, but also supporting their use of the survey methods to the larger mammals and other taxa of interest; ultimately, these CBOs should be able to generate wildlife trends of adequate quality to supplement DWNP wildlife counts, improving prospects that CBOs could provide their own data during negotiations for wildlife hunting quotas (where regulated hunting does take place).
Describe the immediate benefits received by the participants and/or the recipient communities:
The immediate benefits for recipient were strengthened scientific capacity, especially increased understanding of ecological survey methodologies. Similarly, for the statutory agencies (DEA, DWNP and Ministry of Agriculture, particularly Dept of Crop Production), the project has availed a dataset with which they could start exploring bird trend data; this data will only become more robust with time.
Describe long-term benefits:
The long term benefits include empowered local citizens who would better manage their natural resources, due to increased knowledge in ecological survey methodologies, improved understanding of why wildlife monitoring is important, and greater appreciation and use of evidence-based decision making. Particularly because of greater rural community engagement in biodiversity monitoring, this project will significantly improve Botswana?s achievements of several CBD obligations e.g. attainment of Goals A and B of the Aichi targets, which call for ?Addressing the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society? and ?Reducing the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use? respectively.
