Treesearch

Conservation of species with high Partners in Flight concern scores may suggest management for apparently conflicting habitat needs on a given property or specific site, such as birds requiring early-successional vs. latersuccessional broadleaved forests. Two species of concern with distinctly different habitat needs provide a case study for consideration. Declining populations of Goldenwinged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera), which require early successional habitats, and Cerulean Warbler (Dendroica cerulea), a mature-forest breeder, each experience difficulties related to breeding...

Counts and banding captures of spring or fall migrants can generate useful information on the status and trends of the source populations. To do so, the counts and captures must be taken and recorded in a standardized and consistent manner. We present recommendations for field methods for counting and capturing migrants at intensively operated sites, such as bird observatories and banding stations with daily or near daily coverage. Each site should generate a daily "migration count" for each species. One or more methods are acceptable, including a visible migration count, a census or area...

Partners in Flight Bird Conservation Plans (BCPs) have been under development since 1995. Plans are now available for almost all of the physiographic areas and/or states in the continental United States (BCPs can be downloaded at www.partnersinflight.org). Although the format of and information in each plan varies to some degree depending upon the region and approach taken by its authors, every plan includes a list of bird species in greatest need of conservation attention in the planning unit, with those species then grouped into "suites" on the basis of shared general habitat affinities....

Following the example of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, deriving numerical population estimates and conservation targets for priority landbird species is considered a desirable, if not necessary, element of the Partners in Flight planning process. Methodology for deriving such estimates remains in its infancy, however, and the use of numerical population targets remains controversial within the conservation and academic communities. By allowing a set of simple assumptions regarding species' detectability, relative abundance data from Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) routes may be...

As part of the Partners in Flight (PIF) bird-conservation planning process, we assessed breeding land bird species according to seven categories of population vulnerability to derive a priority species pool in each of 12 physiographic areas that overlap the northeastern U.S. We then grouped species into the following habitat-species suites: (1) boreal-mountaintop habitats (stunted conifers) that support a majority of the world's population of Bicknell's Thrush; (2) maritime marsh and ecotonal communities that support nearly all breeding Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrows, coastal populations...

Missouri and Iowa have adopted the Bird Conservation Area (BCA) model of Partners in Flight and applied the BCA model to ten areas managed to benefit grassland birds. These ten BCAs have large core areas of continuous grassland centered on active lek sites of Greater Prairie-Chickens (Tympanuchus cupido). Management is focused on expanding the number of hectares of grasslands, opening vistas by tree and shrub removal, and mowing lek sites. Using annual roadside surveys, we are evaluating grassland bird responses to conservation activities on the ten BCAs by monitoring bird abundance within...

These two volumes contain in part papers presented at the Third International Partners in Flight Conference: A Workshop on Bird Conservation Implementation and Integration, which was held 20-24 March 2002 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Monterey, California. The conference gathered together researchers, educators, foresters, monitoring specialists, planners, and land managers to discuss the past, present, and future directions of conservation, land planning, and research for birds in North and South America, with a primary focus on landbirds. The papers in these volumes represent a...

Exactly one hundred years ago, with North America in full-fledged environmental crisis, prominent members of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) participated in major political and social upheaval. A century of unrestrained exploitation had reached catastrophic proportions, with Passenger Pigeons and Eskimo Curlews representing only the tip of an iceberg. Birds as diverse as parakeet, egrets, ducks, terns, and plovers were plummeting. AOU leaders, led by one of the union?s founders and first editor of The Auk (J.A. Allen), had argued publicly and lobbied privately alongside civic...

State agencies are often considered the prime avenues for implementation of Partners in Flight (PIF) bird conservation plans. Yet, such agencies already have in place a planning structure, which allows for dispersal of Federal Aid funds and guides management actions. Consequently, superimposing additional planning frameworks (e.g., PIF bird conservation plans) on state agencies may be met with resistance. Maine has successfully overcome these obstacles through an integrated planning approach that uses stakeholder input to set objectives, meets agency commitments under Federal Aid, and...

This paper explores the development of population based objectives for birds. The concept of population based objectives for bird conservation lies at the core of planning in the North American Bird Conservation Initiative. Clear objectives are needed as a basis for partnership, and a basis for program evaluation in an adaptive context. In the case of waterfowl, species for which large demographic datasets provide a rich ground for analysis, there have been successes in formal, model-based scenarios for setting and tracking objectives. The approach used for waterfowl may allow uncontrollabl...