5 — Conclusions

Because biodiversity information is not immediately at hand, it is often not applied in policy or management decisions that affect the organisms involved, nor is that information readily accessible by research scientists. (Edwards et al. 2000)

It has become common practice that scientists complain about insufficient data sets, and a claim for "further studies" forms an important part of every species action plan or grant application. The GROMS has demonstrated that indeed there are surprising knowledge gaps. But there is also an overwhelming amount of detailed studies available for certain areas, providing counts and distribution data at a high spatial resolution (e.g. Hammond et al. 1995). Most of the results are stored on paper or scattered digital resources, not amenable to interactive searching. Therefore, a transformation of these results into adequate environmental policies requires time and access to good libraries. The present project hopefully will remedy this situation at least partially: It is now possible to search geographically for a subset of migratory species, and the resulting information could serve as a starting point for decision makers to identify threatened species groups, and to consult the respective experts.
This chapter outlines recommendations and perspectives for an improvement of data exchange and accessibility, and presents a condensed threat analysis for conservation policies, based on the author’s personal experience gained during this project.

This document should be quoted as part of the publication "Riede, K. (2001): The Global Register of Migratory Species ­ Database, GIS Maps and Threat Analysis. Münster (Landwirtschaftsverlag), 400 pp." + CD

 by Klaus Riede