Blank page introduction Summary Conclusions and Recommendations 9

9. Discussion

The most important point of discussion is that the section of this report which analyses the current situation and progress in individual countries, is based on questionnaires which were filled in by informers of varying position and expertise. The contents of this section are therefore only as accurate as the contributions Wetlands International received. However, it is important to realise that it is the state of knowledge and awareness which determines the extent to which authorities and hunters are able and willing to amend legislation, and to switch to the use of non-toxic shot, respectively. Also, considering the fact that independent research in all countries would be logistically and financially impossible, research using questionnaires is, although clearly not preferable, the only feasible way to survey the scale of the problem and the levels of legislation and awareness.

Considering the fact that the countries which responded at least once before (predominantly OECD or EU countries, and often contracting parties to the relevant conventions), have relatively more legislation concerning the use of lead shot compared to the larger sample group of 2000 (see chapter 5), it is notable that the average estimate of the amount of lead present in wetlands is larger in this smaller group. An explanation for this could be that the lead poisoning problem is indeed of relatively more importance in these countries. This could be explained by the fact that waterbirds are primarily hunted with guns in these regions, in contrast to, for example, many African countries where it is more common to catch birds with nets or traps. Alternatively, however, the awareness of the problem might be higher in the developed countries (as a consequence of better logistics and finances allocated to research), and in turn their ability to correctly judge the amount of lead present in wetlands (which, as indicated earlier, might actually be larger too). In other words, the more a country knows about the problem, the larger it will judge the scale of it to be. This has important implications for the interpretation of the data presented in chapter 5: the judgement of the lead poisoning problem appears to be highly subjective. If a country reports a deterioration of the situation, this might therefore actually mean that the awareness of the problem has increased. It might of course also mean that it was a different informer who responded for that particular country this time, and that this informer had other (less/more accurate or recent) information at his or her disposal. This is, for that matter, something which could be more generally the case, and not only in countries which reported a deteriorated situation.

In some cases, the classification system used in chapter 5 might be misleading. Category B, for example, does not distinguish between countries which have a ban on the use of lead shot for all but one or two species in all wetlands, and countries which have a ban in only one or two wetlands. However, a system with more categories was judged to be confusing and unfit for this purpose. It should therefore not be concluded, for example, that countries in category B are necessarily at the highest feasible level of legislation; these countries, too, should keep improving their legislation, parallel with their logistics and education for hunters.

Similarly, the binary system (1=yes, 0=no) used for the quantitative analyses is not always fully appropriate. Firstly, when two informers responded differently for a particular country, the yes-value was used in the analyses; this might bias the results positively. Secondly, there were many cases in which informers responded “yes, although....” referring to a certain situation, while other informers responded “no, although....” while referring to a very similar situation. Thirdly, similar to the flaw in the classification system, when an informer answers “yes” to a question, for example the question asking whether there is any awareness of the problem, this does not say anything about the degree of awareness, nor about the group where there is an awareness (e.g. only amongst environmentalists). However, this system was judged to be the only way in which the problem could be usefully quantified.

Finally, it might be the case that respondents knowingly underestimated the scale of the problem and/or overestimated their monitoring, enforcement, awareness and co-ordination levels in order to avoid focusing attention on the fact that they do not make a sufficient effort to comply with the conventions they ratified.

10. Acknowledgements

This report was produced by Wetlands International with financial support from the UK Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the AEWA Secretariat.

Many members of the Wetlands International team were involved. Dineke Beintema-Hietbrink composed the questionnaire, and, together with Berna Heikamp, collected the data from the individual countries, the Convention and Agreement Secretariats, and the International Hunters’ Organisations. Simon Delany, Ward Hagemeijer, Niels Gilissen and Gerard Boere provided editing suggestions.
Wetlands International would like to thank the large number of individual contributors from all over the world. Without all these valuable contributions the production of this report would not have been possible.
Special thanks go to Umberto Gallo-Orsi (BirdLife International), Bert Lenten (AEWA Secretariat), Jean-Yves Mondain-Monval (Station Biologique du Tour du Valat, France), Albert Beintema (Alterra, The Netherlands) and Henny van der Windt (Dept. of Science and Society, University of Groningen, The Netherlands) for critically commenting on the text and contents of early versions of this report.
Thanks go to Catherine Weijburg-Cazier and Brigitte Zwerver-Berret for translating the report into French.
The literature review, data analysis and writing of the report were carried out as part of a masters programme in Biology at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
Nienke Beintema

July 2001