Monitoring
The main beneficiary responsible for implementation of monitoring activities is the Lithuanian ornithological society. Other partners will support the LOD in the implementation of this project action.
Monitoring covers 3 main actions:
- Monitoring of the project actions and ex-ante and ex-post monitoring
Project monitoring track progress and success of the project actions with particular emphasis of the implementation of the concrete conservation (C) actions. In addition to the indicators related to the implementation of the practical conservation means, the project partners will monitor indicators of the dissemination actioons, i.e. increase of practical knowledge on the protection of the targeted species, number of visitors of the mobile photo exhibition and public events and others.
The LOD staff will perform ex-ante and ex-post monitoring mainly focused on the monitoring of breeding populations of Common and Little terns and their habitats conditions in national SPAs network designated for protection of these species. Breeding Common terns will be trapped and equipped with the GPS transmitters for the collection of information on their "home range" and the rate of the breeding sites' replacement. Such data will be not collected for breeding Little terns, as current technologies do not produced transmitter for birds of such small size. All monitoring data will be entered into the GIS database and will be used as baseline information for the long-term monitoring of the species conservation status and evaluation of effectiveness of the implemented project actions. All monitoring reports will be published on the project website and reported to PSC. Besides, the monitoring results will be used for dissemination activities in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the implemented practical conservation actions and applied practices in order to show evidence of the ability to replicate and transfer results during and after the project implementation to larger scale.
- Evaluation of the project ecosystem services and socio-economic conditions
The outputs of the analysis of the ecosystem services (EcoS) will be report, which includes listing of the ecosystem goods and services that each habitat type within the project area provides. The report will be prepared in three stages: first part of the report will define EcoS evaluation methodology that will be applied for project situation, also will define a baseline situation at the start of the project. It will be produced by the end of the first project year. The second (mid-term) part of report will evaluate progress of the project during first two years of implementation, and will be produced in 2,5 years of project implementation. The final part of the report will be prepared by the end and shall be based on the data from the entire project implementation.
The task of the project impact on socio-economic conditions is to measure and document socio-economic impact of the project actions on the local community and its economy, and economy in general, and in
addition to the ecosystem functions restoration. The special attention will be given to the evaluation of the socio-economic impact of the activities that are of the demonstration and pilot nature, like for example "alternative sites" approach, cross-sectorial cooperation when organising nature management activities, use of GPS transmitters. The output of the activity will be a report that will identify the socio-economic impacts of the project activities and applied methods. The report shall also provide a cost-estimate analysis of the applied demonstrative and pilot activities, as well as will evaluate economic effect if those project
actions would be taken in other locations or sectors.
Monitoring of the LIFE project performance indicators
This action foresees monitoring assessment and evaluation of implementation progress of the actions for LIFE performance indicators. The indicators will contribute while evaluating the impact of the LIFE project in a view of the overall objectives of the LIFE Programme, in line with the Regulation and the Multiannual Work Programme for 2014-2017.