 The EBCC was founded in 1992, following the merger of two ornithological organisations, the European Ornithological Atlas Committee and the International Bird Census Committee.The EBCC is responsible for the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS), which aims to collect data from national bird monitoring schemes across Europe so as to study the forces behind population changes and use common bird indicators as a proxy for environmental health, and thus inform policy.Monitoring data is published as the European Breeding Birds Atlas, the second of which (EBBA2) is currently in preparation.