Recommendations

Coordination: Better coordination allows for increased value for investment in monitoring programs, better opportunity to compare results, and more ability to draw meaningful conclusions from data:

• Strategically locate Arctic research stations and monitoring vessels, and use all collected specimens, to allow the collection and analysis of as many CBMP FECs as possible.
• Ensure research stations operate all year to better study FECs year round.
• Combine national monitoring with collaborative approaches that allow for sufficient integration and standardization to conduct syntheses across the circumpolar region.
• Standardize how data are collected, managed and made available. This is a key component in ensuring circumpolar Arctic comparability and should be an important consideration in the implementation of monitoring plans.
• Encourage states to increase the implementation of existing internationally coordinated monitoring plans.
• Connect monitoring initiatives and report across scales so that results are meaningful for local, sub-national, national, regional and global decision-makers.
• Continue to increase coordination between CBMP and other regional and global monitoring initiatives e.g., the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEOBON), International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES).

Supporting Indigenous Community-Based Monitoring: Supporting community-based monitoring as an approach to active participation in biodiversity research and management of protected area is beneficial for conservation efforts.

Seabirds

• Develop methods for assessing diet to increase our understanding of changes in the ecosystem and how they affect seabird populations.
• When selecting sites for new monitoring, consider proximity to hotspots for marine activities, access to the sea, and inclusion of plankton monitoring.
• Expand colony-based monitoring and strive to include a more complete array of parameters, in particular, diet and measures of survival.
• Consider a higher frequency of monitoring as current levels make it difficult to identify mechanisms or causes of change in populations.
• Conduct targeted surveys and individual tracking studies of seabird interactions at sea to improve our understanding of seabird interactions at sea, where seabirds spend most of their time.
• Continue to conduct at sea surveys on an opportunistic basis.

Birds: Most bird species are difficult to monitor and attribute change due to the large spatial extent of their breeding habitats and multiple threats throughout flyways. Current monitoring is uneven and inadequate. The START reports on herbivores, insectivores, carnivores, and omnivores.

• Sustaining long-term monitoring projects is the best opportunity to track changes in FECs and drivers of those changes.
• Expand monitoring of species and populations with unknown or uncertain trends such as waders in the Central Asian Flyway and East Asian–Australasian Flyway (under the Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative).
• Improve monitoring coverage of the high Arctic and other areas with poor spatial coverage (i.e., Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Greenland, and eastern Russia), including staging and wintering areas within and outside the Arctic.
• Adopt new and emerging monitoring technologies, including various tagging devices (for the study of distribution and migration, and identification of critical stopover and wintering sites), bioacoustics (for abundance and diversity sampling), and satellite data (for colony monitoring).
• Enhance coordination within and among Arctic and non-Arctic states to improve data collection on migratory species and critical site identification across species’ ranges.
• Harmonize long-term studies to improve the reliability of status and trends assessments, ability to report on FEC attributes (e.g., phenology), and possible effects of environmental change, including risks of phenological mismatch.
• Use research stations as platforms to increase data coordination, sampling, and analyses, of FECs and drivers, and ensure standardized bird monitoring is part of station mandates where lacking.
• Strengthen linkages with AMAP to improve contaminant monitoring at different trophic levels and facilitate cooperation on isotope and genetic studies.

Reporting Guidelines

• Provide appropriate opportunities for communication between those involved in carrying out the Strategy.
• Report annually to CAFF summarizing actions taken or planned under the Strategy.

Traditional and Local Knowledge (TLK): Utilizing Traditional and Local Knowledge and involvement of TK holders allows for increased understanding of relationships and changes underway in Arctic ecosystems, current and historical trends, and serves to build valuable partnerships on the ground in Arctic communities.

• Use Traditional and Local Knowledge within the design and implementation of monitoring plans. The Traditional and Local Knowledge of people living along and off the Arctic Ocean is an invaluable resource for understanding changes in Arctic marine ecosystems and its inclusion should be supported by national governments.
• Increase engagement and partnerships with local residents and easy to access technology in monitoring programs. Indigenous communities are important ‘first responders’ to catastrophic events. More importantly, their knowledge systems provide a wealth of knowledge that should be involved in the analysis of collected data for increased understanding of current trends and filling historical gaps.
• There is a need for TLK on a range of FECs and to engage networks of TLK holders and Indigenous organisations.
• Use both TLK and scientific information on the analysis of harvest levels and status when evaluating overall population health and managing hunts.

Coordination: Improved coordination of monitoring is necessary to implement a comprehensive, integrated, ecosystem-based monitoring program envisioned by the CBMP. Coordination is necessary to help achieve additional advice for monitoring presented in the START.

• Design statistically rigorous sampling methodologies and protocols.
• Encourage states to implement the CBMP Terrestrial Plan to secure long-term funding for existing monitoring.
• CAFF, including the CBMP, should take a coordinating role to follow-up on advice from this report. Specific tasks are found in the CBMP Strategic Plan 2021-2025.