Makgadikgadi Pans Important Bird Area Monitoring Report 2009

As part of Birdlife Botswana’s commitment to maintaining a network of sites that are critical for birds both nationally and internationally, the Makgadikgadi Pans Important Bird Area (IBA) is monitored annually following BirdLife’s global monitoring framework. This framework is based on the State – Pressure – Response model that has been adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and this report is divided into three parts paralleling these components.
Part 1 deals with the state of the Makgadikgadi Pans IBA, with particular emphasis on the ‘trigger’ species of birds that ‘qualify’ the area as an IBA.
Part 2 focuses on pressures or threats to the IBA - these were originally identified by Tyler and Bishop (1998), but some of these have been superceded and a current set of issues has been identified through fieldwork. These threats are ranked so that they can be incorporated into the World Bird Database (WBDB).