Preface

Migrating animals have fascinated humans for a variety of reasons: they travel thousands of kilometres, even from pole to pole, guided by unknown mechanisms, but along well-defined routes, and following exact timetables. Klaus Töpfer called them "travellers without passport", because they move freely within one world, long before Homo sapiens invented political borders, fences, power lines and dams. In temperate regions, they occur in high numbers, and their presence during summer is an important component of biodiversity at higher latitudes. Birds come to mind first, but migration is widespread throughout the animal kingdom. Among the less well known wanderers are bats, turtles, fishes and insects. For their protection across borders, the "Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals" or "Bonn Convention" has been developed, as a result of a recommendation of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, 1972. Today, the Bonn Convention has become an effective legal instrument, providing recommendations for the Convention on Biological Diversity, which resulted from the Rio Conference on the Human Environment, 1992.

The information revolution of the last years was exciting for all biologists managing large data sets. For the first time, they had the tools for efficient presentation and linkage of their data via the World Wide Web. However, it is still a long way to store the complex world of biodiversity, if one wishes to include more than a genome sequence. The integration of geographical information within databases is a particularly complex task, and migratory species are an even greater challenge, as they are on the move.

Efficient conservation has to be based on knowledge, including input from other disciplines. Agricultural practice, fishery policy and forestry have tremendous impacts on conservation, especially on animals migrating through different habitats. The GROMS co-operates with the newly founded, interdisciplinary Center for Development Research (ZEF), the Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Institute and Museum of Zoology (ZFMK), and the Geoinformatics Department of Bonn University. This cooperation between various institutions provides the necessary interdisciplinary research environment to deal with the complex questions of modern conservation biology. The present volume summarises the first results. Figure captions, summary and the database user guide are translated to German, to facilitate wider distribution in Germany, where the UNEP-CMS Secretariat of the Bonn Convention is hosted.

Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN)
Bonn, Germany

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