Archives for Conservation Planning

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has announced the release of the Birds of Conservation Concern (BCC) report. The BCC list relies heavily on the Avian Conservation Assessment Databsae (ACAD) to help guide the conservation status of species, and ACAD would not have been possible without the dedicated work of the Partners in Flight network. Many thanks to those in the Partners in Flight network who worked on the ACAD and the BCC, ensuring linkages between the BCC list and PIF objectives. Here is some more details from the USFWS regarding his new BCC Report.

The Department of Defense started their Partners in Flight program in 1991, a year after the initial launch of the PIF idea. To celebrate their 30th anniversary, the Spring 2021 natural resource newsletter for DoD is focused entirely on Partners in Flight and thirty years of amazing work.

The goal of this revised Joint Venture Landbird Habitat Conservation Strategy is to guide regional conservation that results in habitat to support populations of priority landbird species and related social values, consistent with continental bird conservation goals.

Researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Appalachian Laboratory, University of Delaware, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Colorado State University, Georgetown University, University of Massachusetts and Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center defined a new migration metric called the stopover-to-passage ratio (SPR). Using eight years of data from 12 weather surveillance radars, they found approximately half of the birds migrating through the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts of the southeastern U.S. stop within 100 km of its coastlines, totaling ~1.2 to 2.0 billion birds each spring and autumn. Further, the drivers of stopover habitat use differed between spring and autumn migration, suggesting seasonal differences in habitat function.

Chaparral provides important habitat for birds and other wildlife in oak woodland ecosystems, yet land managers concerned about the risk of severe wildfire often reduce shrubs to protect oak woodlands. To provide guidance on how to best reduce chaparral in oak restoration projects so that it still provides key habitat for shrub-associated species, we developed a decision support tool for land managers based on the results from three studies. The “Oak Woodlands and Chaparral: Aligning chaparral-associated bird habitat needs with oak woodland restoration and fuel reduction in southwest Oregon and northern California” Decision Support Tool informs management decisions regarding how different fuel-reduction methods (i.e., mechanical or manual treatments) influence bird communities and how the size and arrangement of the remaining chaparral patches influences whether shrub-associated birds will use them.

Extensive fuel treatments implemented by land management agencies in the Klamath-Siskiyou Bioregion of southern Oregon and northern California have maintained no-cut buffer strips along riparian areas. Riparian Fuel Treatments in Intermittent and Perennial Streams: Effectiveness and Ecological Effects addresses an information gap regarding decisions to include riparian areas in fuel reduction efforts.

In 1992, Peter Stangel and Amos Eno of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation shared the visions and hopes for the future for Partners in Flight in a changing world. Now in our 30th anniversary year, as we learn from our past and prepare for the next 30 years, we see that these insights are still relevant in our continuing efforts to drive bird conservation forward and keep Partners in Flight discussions on the cutting edge of wildlife conservation.

Many species of migratory birds travel thousands of kilometers between their breeding grounds in Canada and the United States and their wintering grounds across Latin America. During these movements they will experience different geographies, land cover types and threats. Among all migrants, those going as far as South America are declining most steeply. While the exact cause of declines for these species is not always clear, considerable evidence suggests that extensive loss of mid-elevation forest in their Andean wintering grounds is a primary contributor.