Welcome to the homepage developed
as an aid for organizing and conducting counts of Great Cormorants
in the Western Palearctic.
The home page is developed under
the project 'Cormorant counts in the Western Palearctic'.
The overall aim of the project is to update our knowledge of the
abundance and distribution of Great Cormorants in the Western
Palearctic both during breeding and winter.
The project is led by a group of
persons from The IUCN/Wetlands International Cormorant Research
Group (CRG) and persons from the project 'CorMan'. The CorMan
project was launched by the European Commission in 2011. A
description of the count project is given further down this
page.
By use of this home page you can
define the location of a breeding colony or a night roost and you
can enter results from counts of nests or birds using the night
roost. It is also possible to add relevant information about the
colonies or the roosts.
Most of the pages are aimed for
coordinators and counters, only. The use of these pages requires
you to log on. Quick guides and fuller guidelines are
available to the right and under 'Instructions'.
Counters can register HERE.
Description of 'CorMan' and the count
project
There continues to be considerable interest in Great Cormorants
and their numbers in the Western Palearctic area, not least because
of the continuation of Cormorant-fish-fisheries conflicts. As a
consequence, the European Commission has launched a new initiative
called 'CorMan' primarily aimed at:
- Organising counts of breeding and wintering Great Cormorants in
the Western Palearctic in collaboration with the CRG.
- Creating an internet platform for the dissemination of
information about Great Cormorant numbers, management and
experiences relating to methods to reduce impacts of Great
Cormorants. A first version of this platform is available
here, i.e.
under the European Commission 'Directorate-General for the
Environment' (DG Environment).
For these reasons, the European Commission has asked the CRG to
collaborate in organising counts of breeding colonies and of
wintering Great Cormorants. The main aim is to update our knowledge
of the abundance and distribution of Great Cormorants in the
Western Palearctic both during breeding and winter.
The count project is led by representatives from the CRG and the
new EC initiative CorMan. The major lines of communication will be
through Area Coordinators who will be responsible for
establishing and maintaining contact with the National
Coordinators.
After the end of the counting season each country will provide
the count project with information about a) coverage, b) numbers of
colonies/roosts counted, c) total numbers of nests/birds counted
and d) best estimate of total numbers in case coverage was
incomplete.
The CRG will take over the responsibility of managing the
database containing the count data after the end of the joint count
project.