Scheme Coordinators. In practice, monitoring schemes are coordinated by Scheme Coordinators who are responsible for the day- to-day operations of these schemes. The AEWA Guidelines on Waterbird Monitoring (Xxxxx et al., 2018) already provides a general description of the capacity needs for coordinating a waterbird monitoring scheme and provides access to additional guidance and training materials. Regional trainings for IWC coordinators have been provided for all African, Arabian and Central Asian countries and further support is provided through regional initiatives such as the Wadden Sea Flyway Initiative, the RESOURCE project, the Mediterranean Waterbirds Network, the Adriatic Flyway Initiative and directly by Wetlands International. A mechanism for data flow has already been established for the IWC data through the IWC Online portal and Wetlands International already provides the results of country-level trend analyses to the national IWC coordinators as a side product of the trend analyses for the AEWA Conservation Status Report. It is more important to recognise the importance of establishing capacity for aerial surveys in Africa and Central Asia and for offshore surveys in the Caspian region. New Scheme Coordinators should become familiar with the survey techniques, relevant sampling design and the analytical methods. However, each of these potential schemes would require its own specialized trainings preceding the first flyway-level surveys. Potential trainers for the aerial surveys include Technical Support Unit for the Plan of Action for Africa that already carries out aerial surveys in the Sahel. For the Caspian offshore surveys, potential trainers could be available from the Baltic Sea region. In case of the colonial and species-specific breeding bird monitoring schemes the challenge facing the AEWA is that monitoring these populations will require a variety of methods depending on the species, the location, etc. However, some training capacity already exists or should be established within the framework of the relevant AEWA Species Action and Management Plans that would cover the Priority 1 populations and could be provided within the fraemwork of the AEWA International Species Working Groups. For other priority populations, AEWA could organise introductory training for Scheme Coordinators should focus on survey techniques, sampling design, statistical techniques to produce population size estimates from samples, trend analyses, data management, reporting and coor...
