French Bird Atlas: Biodiversity Check and List of Birds in Nation

Nations have long tracked their wildlife in order to keep aware of biodiversity health. Mexico, for instance, has detailed bird studies and records of other creatures for decades. Regarding birds, France has conducted two national atlases of ornithology. Atlases in general show the distribution and status of species, noting their breeding, where they winter, and migration patterns across cities, regions, countries or continents. France did one in 1975 and another in 1989, and a new edition of France's bird atlas was published this month, according to a release.

This is significant, too, because it is at a time when the EU is working on putting together its 2020 biodiversity strategy.

The new French atlas was put together by the organization LPO (BirdLife in France) and SEOF (The Ornithological Society of Studies in France), and they collaborated with the National Natural History Museum, Paris, said the release.

In the collection are 357 monographs of birds and three sub-species that spend breeding or winter time in France. There are 1,400 pages in all, in two volumes. Seven hundred photos of birds and 1,500 maps of distributions over history and in contemporary times are within the two volumes too, the release confirmed.

Researchers worked for six years determining the birds' reproductive status, distribution and abundance, and many citizen scientists and employees gathered information on nesting over four springs, according to the release.

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