Climate change affects the populations and distributions of species, the composition of ecological communities, and nature’s provision of goods and services – such as food, fuel and clean water. Climate change also compounds other major threats to biodiversity, such as invasive alien species, habitat fragmentation and overexploitation. Some areas in the country, particularly the south-western part are naturally dry, however, it has been observed over the past couple of years that the dry seasons are becoming longer and the wet seasons shorter. This has had a negative impact on the birdlife in that area. One such area, also housing a species of global conservation concern is Machile and Simungoma. Birds are a particularly good indicator of environmental change for several reasons: Each species of bird has adapted or evolved to favour certain habitat types, food sources, and temperature ranges. Climate change and global warming using birds as indicators in Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) through sustainable utilisation and management of ecosystems and the services they provide. Without ambitious mitigation efforts, global average temperature rise this century will exceed the globally agreed goal of keeping temperatures well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.

• BirdWatch Zambia delivers ground-breaking research on the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, to inform better decisions on the ground.
• BirdWatch Zambia supports nature-sensitive renewable energy deployment and delivers solutions to governments, investors and developers to ensure these do not negatively impact biodiversity.
• BirdWatch Zambia advocates for nature-sensitive and climate-smart safeguards in Multilateral Environmental Agreements.
• Our work shows that supporting community engagement and action can build the resilience of natural and societal systems.
• BirdWatch Zambia advocates for the importance of healthy ecosystems to be recognized in national, regional and international climate change and development policy.

Bird banding is an important technique that is used for studying and identifying population and individual birds. The main reason for putting a ring, a tag or a band on birds is to mark individuals so that they can be recognized when they are encountered again later on, either as re-capture, re-sightings or recoveries. In order to identify and keep track of individual birds during any given survey, scientists put aluminium, metal or coloured rings on birds' legs. Similar to the licence plate on a motor vehicle, each aluminium or metal ring is engraved with a unique set of numbers that are a file reference where details for the individual bird are recorded in the database.

In this database, details of the species ID for the bird are clearly indicated, this includes the date, time and place where the bird was ringed as well as the purpose or type of survey under which the bird was ringed. All these are indicated together with the name of the ringer and also number of people involved during the survey under which the bird was ringed. From these records, knowledge about migration, dispersal, survival rates and longevity are obtained. Further, additional important information is collected during the ringing process such as weight, moult, parasites, age and sex as well as measurements for other various body parts of the bird according to species and type of survey being undertaken. This information helps to understand the biological processes and life histories for many poorly described, known and studied species.

Colour bands or rings that may not have numbers on them are used to identify marked individual birds easily even with a naked eye without equipment such as binoculars, the other reason is to identify individual birds and also species populations, this is mostly during population surveys that seek to understand bird’s movements and how different bird populations interact. The trend of advancing technology in scientific research has introduced electronic devices such as Telemetry Satellite Transmitters, GSM Transmitters or Geolocators that have improved data collection with real time observation, accurate mapping of bird migration and accurate GPS coordinates throughout their migration route.

These electronic devices do not replace the technique of rings, tags and bands, but they are used as an addition to help improve data collection through electronic transmission, this makes it easy as data is collected remotely without recapturing the bird, other information such as height, speed and route maps are also made possible through these electronic devices.