Critically Endangered Junin Grebe may go extinct. Without continuous monitoring of the breeding success, it may happen faster than we can detect it.
The Junin Grebe has an extremely small range and population. It is the most threatened bird in Peru. Yet there is no regular monitoring that can give reliable data of changes of the population. By introducing simple monitoring of the breeding success over a couple of months to a year, we shall show that this methodology gives far more reliable data to monitor any change in the population than the yearly/bi-yearly total counts of birds in the lake which are carried out using small rocky boats.
The total population counts have many sources of discrepancies that makes it impossible to compare data from one year to another, such as:
difficulty of separating Junin and Silvery Grebe in the field,
observer experience,
birds being wary not allowing getting close enough for certain identification,
birds diving creating double counts,
birds staying within the massive reed areas not allowing to be counted,
birds moving from one survey quadrant to another creating double counts or omit to be counted.
As things are now, rapid changes in the population numbers could go undetected, and may be discovered when it is too late.
