Proceedings of the 7th International Swan Symposium (Wildfowl Special Issue No. 7) now available online
By Eileen C. Rees & Preben Clausen
The Proceedings of the 7th International Swan Symposium (Wildfowl Special Issue No. 7) is available online and can be found here: https://wildfowl.wwt.org.uk/index.php/wildfowl/issue/view/311.
International swan symposia convened by the Swan Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (previously the IWRB and the Wetlands International Swan Specialist Group) have been held periodically since the 1st International Swan Symposium was held at Slimbridge, UK in 1971. On each occasion, papers presented at the symposia have been published as proceedings of the meetings. We are therefore delighted to report that, following the joint 7th International Swan Symposium (7th ISS), which was held in conjunction with the 26th Conference of the Trumpeter Swan Society (TTSS) at Jackson, Wyoming, USA in October 2022, the proceedings have now been published as Wildfowl Special Issue No. 7 in December 2024 (Clausen et al. 2024). This continues the tradition of publishing swan symposia proceedings either as stand-alone volumes (e.g. Matthews & Smart 1980 for the 2nd ISS; Sears & Bacon 1991 for the 3rd ISS; Rees et al. 2002 for the 4th ISS; Wood & Rees 2019 for the 6th ISS) or, in the case of the 1st and 5th ISS, as a group of papers within the Wildfowl journal (Wildfowl 24 in 1973; Wildfowl 64 in 2014), which provide an invaluable source of information on the work undertaken on swan species over the decades.
The talks and poster presentations at the 7th ISS covered a range of topics including population monitoring, movements and flyway delineation, habitat use, demographic rates, consequences of climate change, and threats and conservation management of swan species. Following on from the detailed assessment of current trends and future directions in swan research published in the proceedings of the 6th ISS (Wood et al. 2019, in Wildfowl Special Issue No. 6), along with an assessment of the conservation of the world’s swan populations (Rees et al. 2019), a synthesis paper at the start of the 7th ISS proceedings (Rees & Clausen 2024) gives an update on the latest information on swan research and conservation initiatives over the past 5 years. This review describes recent swan papers published in other journals (e.g. Ao et al. 2020; Fang et al. 2020; Brides et al. 2021, 2022; Clausen et al. 2020; Linssen et al. 2023; Nuijten et al. 2020a,b; Soriano-Redondo et al. 2023; Wood et al. 2021, all listed below), as well as highlighting the additional 13 papers appearing in the Special Issue itself. The latter include further information on population size and trends (e.g. Rees et al. 2024; Olson 2024), breeding biology (Boiko & Luigujõe 2024; Coleman & Coleman 2024), how incubating swans accommodate thermal flux in their environment (Miller & Delehanty 2024), and some outcomes of conservation initiatives (Kearns et al. 2024; Shields et al. 2024). Wood & Newth (2024), in a comprehensive review, give immense insight to the issue of lead poisoning posed on swans by fishing weights. This paper is an important companion to the major review of issues involved with lead shot and rifle ammunition on waterbirds and other animals, and how these can be addressed if Governments actually decide to do so, as illustrated by the progress made following the transition to use of non-lead ammunition in Denmark (Kanstrup 2024).
Wildfowl is an open access journal, so the papers published in Wildfowl Special Issue No. 7 are available for download, free of charge, on the journal’s website. Currently this is at https://wildfowl.wwt.org.uk/index.php/wildfowl/issue/archive, and a link will be provided on moving Wildfowl online to tidsskrift.dk during 2025.
Dedication
This article is dedicated to the memory of Mary Rita Ely, beloved wife of Craig Ely (Guest Editor of Wildfowl Special Issue No. 7), who not only supported his “mad” work on swans and geese over many decades but was a joyful presence at recent swan symposia.
Mary Rita Ely, 1955–2024
Acknowledgements
The 7th International Swan Symposium of the IUCN SSC Swan Specialist group, held in conjunction with the 26th Conference of the Trumpeter Swan Society, was hosted and co-organised by the Ricketts Conservation Foundation. We are immensely grateful to them, to the sponsors of the symposium and to the organising and scientific committees for their efforts in preparing an excellent meeting. We also thank the authors for preparing highly informative papers for publication, and the referees for their careful, detailed reviews of the submitted manuscripts. Publication Wildfowl Special Issue No. 7 was funded by The Trumpeter Swan Society, and we thank them for their additional generosity in supporting this work.
References
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Boiko, D. & Luigujõe, L. 2024. Distribution, abundance and habitat choice of Whooper Swans Cygnus cygnus breeding in Latvia and Estonia, 1973–2021. Wildfowl (Special Issue No. 7): 266–278.
Brides, K., Wood, K.A., Hall, C., Burke, B., McElwaine, G., Einarsson, Ó., Calbrade, N., Hill, O. & Rees, E.C. 2021. The Icelandic Whooper Swan Cygnus cygnus population: current status and long-term (1986–2020) trends in its numbers and distribution. Wildfowl 71: 29–57.
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