In 2006 the World Pheasant Association, in conjunction with partners at the University of Sheffield and Imperial College, London, embarked on an innovative research project, investigating geographic range decline in the Galliformes.  WPA hopes a greater understanding of species’ range changes over time will allow the conservation community to identify the types of species that might be more likely to undergo rapid and catastrophic range change and hence put conservation measures in place in time. 

Information on changes in range extent is currently likely to be of higher quality in species with restricted range ranges.  WPA is concerned that more widespread species may be overlooked because a full assessment across their geographic range is difficult to achieve in practice.  If some of these species’ ranges are punctuated with local extinction events, we may be overlooking, or at least underestimating, the extent to which ‘widespread’ species may be declining.  It is hoped that the project will highlight any such scenarios and provide a platform from which the conservation assessment of widespread species may be improved.

The project is certainly an ambitious one.  In order to quantify how species ranges have declined, an accurate delimitation of current species’ ranges is essential.  A database of approximately 200,000 historical and current Galliformes sightings has been collated, allowing the production of a series of species range maps stretching back to 1850.  We hope that the information collected for this particular project will also be of use to many other conservation workers and projects.