The Annual Review 2008 charts the main achievements, as well as projects, finance and publications of Wetlands International during 2008. Furthermore, it highlights our work in relation to climate change adaptation and on incentive mechanisms for community-based wetland management. As you can read in the Achievements and projects sections of this review, Wetlands International was highly active in all regions during 2008. The outcomes that we achieved in 2008 are important in themselves, but most are just steps towards much longer-term goals to bring about lasting benefits to people and nature. 

Our Annual Review 2007 covers our global organisation and presents the financial information, all our projects, publications and achievements. Wetlands International clearly demonstrated in 2007 the important role it can play as a science-based organisation that can act as a global witness - bringing key facts from the field to the attention of policy-makers. A good example of this was our role in highlighting and quantifying the role of wetlands and especially peatlands as the worlds’ biggest natural terrestrial carbon stores – and demonstrating that through restoration of damaged wetlands we can cost-effectively reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and even halt and reverse them, through carbon sequestration. Equally our role in a number of global and regional projects addressing the avian influenza threat has been to provide data on waterbirds and wetlands so as to contribute to the understanding of how the disease spreads, analyse risks and help countries to make preparations for an outbreak.

The report provides the most recent estimates of population sizes of migratory shorebirds in the East Asian - Australasian Flyway and identifies internationally important sites by species and country.

A project completion report on an aerial survey conducted over rarely visited, remote wetlands of the northern Tanami Desert, north-western Australia, presenting data on waterbird species and numbers following exceptional inundation.

Checklist with all their fish species.

Results of the Asian Waterbird Census: 2002–2004. The report demonstrates the significant value of the Waterbird Census, which covered 2,032 sites across 22 countries, with nearly 8 million waterbirds recorded in all three years. Of the total 274 waterbird and 61 wetland-dependent species recorded, 43 were Globally Threatened species.

Status and Conservation of Shorebirds in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway

New information on occurrence of five species of migratory shorebird, some in substantial numbers, in floodplain wetlands of the Channel Country, in arid inland Australia.