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Poster Short Abstract

Sweden has a long tradition in monitoring biodiversity and population dynamics through voluntary efforts based on standardised protocols. The databases are trusted by governmental authorities for management decisions, regional, national and international reporting and are used in courts of law.

Poster Abstract

Civil society organisations are fundamental for maintaining the competence, motivation and support for monitoring species diversity and wildlife population dynamics in Sweden. BirdLife Sweden, the Swedish Botanical Society, the Swedish Entomological Society, the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management and more contribute in invaluable ways to monitoring efforts. By joining forces with experts and researchers within these organisations and at universities and governmental agencies, standardised protocols for data collection, archiving and distribution have been developed, which in turn has generated public trust in these volunteer observations. The validated databases are used when trying to find solutions to sensitive decisions and dilemmas, may it be for management, negotiations or in court cases.

Lund University runs the Swedish Bird Survey and the Swedish Butterfly Monitoring Scheme in grateful cooperation with volunteers. The Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management and the Swedish Veterinary Agency encourage the public to submit data on alien species, ticks, dead, injured or sick wildlife for surveillance monitoring. The Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management runs monitoring systems for population dynamics of wildlife (e.g. moose) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences hosts Artportalen, where occurrence data are collected for any taxa.

Despite their collaborations between science and volunteers, the Swedish monitoring systems rarely call themselves citizen science and are lacking from the European Citizen Science Association community. In this poster, we will shortly discuss if these experienced systems think that the methods of citizen science can help cover gaps in biodiversity monitoring.