Earth & Sky

The following individuals were interviewed for today’s program. Our thanks to:

Daniel K. Niven
Director
Important Bird Areas Program
National Audubon Society
Audubon Science Center
Ivyland, PA

John Bianchi
Communications Director

Interview with Daniel Niven:

*) Ever since the 70s there’s been more of a realization that a lot of the birds that are here during the breeding season leave the country and spend a good part of the year south of the border, mainly in Mexico, Central America, some in South America, and so forth. And so I think that’s one of the reasons that the International Migratory Bird Day was set up, to draw attention to the fact that there is this massive phenomena of bird migration, of land birds, and shorebirds, and so forth, as well as waterfowl ? we’re all familiar with the Canada geese migration ? so that was part of the idea, to draw attention to it and celebrate it. And so the theme of the International Migratory Bird Day this year is important places and important bird areas, are by definition important places for birds. And the Important Bird Areas program was started in the mid-1980s by what is now Birdlife International. It’s a global program that uses standard criteria to identify sites that would ? based on your common sense ? be the most important sites for birds. So the various criteria include sites that have threatened or endangered species, or sites that support species that have a very narrow geographic range?in other words, they’d be vulnerable if that area was lost because they don’t occur anyplace else ? species that are restricted to specific types of biomes or habitats, so if a certain habitat was lost they’d be in serious trouble. Or also sites that have large congregations of birds. Often those are wading birds, shore birds, or other congregatory species. And so the Important Bird Area Criteria provide a way to apply standard criteria to determine what sites are really the most important to birds. Not just birds that are rare, but places that support birds that potentially could be threatened if the sites were lost. So this program is being initiated on a global scale. There’s over 150 countries around the world that have Important Bird Area programs, and they all use a standard set of criteria to identify sites. And so in many countries throughout Europe, the IBAs (Important Bird Areas) are being used in a conservation sense and being accepted by governments, as well as non-government organizations and so forth. They’re becoming a global currency for site protection. And so it’s really of relevance to International Migratory Bird Day because many of the sites that we identify as Important Bird Areas are reporting species that are going south of the border, and many of the countries south of the border also have Important Bird Areas and they mean the same things, the same currency. And so that’s one reason that they’re being recognized this year, the theme’s the International Migratory Bird Day.

*) Well here in the U.S. Birdlife International, as a global organization involved with bird conservation, works with partner organizations in each country. And in the United States, The National Audubon Society is the partner designate for Birdlife International. So we have a responsibility, in cooperation with Birdlife, to implement the program here in the U.S. And so that’s our mission. And so we’re implementing the program on a state-by-state basis so that we have a programatic infrastructure to achieve conservation of the site. The first part of the process in an IBA program is to identify the site, to get a lot of local support, to have all the different agencies and bird clubs, individuals in a state who are interested invited to the table to help the process of identifying these sites. And once that process is done, the main goal is to achieve conservation. And so that might involve working with state agencies, with the government in some cases. They pass some legislation that in some cases that could potentially give added protection to sites if they’ve been identified as important bird areas. It provides a way on the ground to efficiently determine the most important locations for birds and therefore help to develop reasonable conservation plans that make the most use of the limited time and funds that are available for conservation. So we’re developing these programs on a state by state basis, and we try to do that in a very broad way, including all the stake holders in each state, so that the program that we put together has general acceptance and makes sense, it’s an efficient way to achieve bird conservation.

*) Well, there’s a lot of reasons why birds are potentially vulnerable. And there’s a lot of things that cause changes to bird populations. And obviously pollution, over harvest through hunting, disease, are all issues. But the number one cause of endangerment of species is loss of habitat. And that could be direct clearing of habitat, fragmentation of habitat by putting in housing developments, or in any other way degrading the quality of the habitat of the birds. And it’s because, in over 90% of the cases, when a species is endangered, some kind of change or loss of the habitat is implicated as one of the causes. And so it’s because of that importance of the issue that we’re focussing on a habitat based approach to achieve bird conservation.

*) Birds will need and use the habitat for a number of different purposes. Obviously they need sites for breeding, they need sites off in different locations, different places for spending the winter and surviving. And often they’ll have different locations where they’ll feed different from where they’ll roost. And so the habitat, the structure of the habitat, the type of vegetation, the type of food that’s produced by the vegetation or insects that are supported by the vegetation that the birds depend on for food, all those key components in the ecology of each species really are going to be determining whether or not a habitat is going to be suitable for a bird or not. And birds can vary a great deal, and the plasticity of their habitat selection, the extant to which they can adapt to different habitats and use different habitats. And some species are quite specialized and require very specialized types of habitat. And those species can, in general, be more vulnerable to changes in habitat and loss of habitat and so forth. So usually it’s a subset of species that will be most heavily impacted by loss of the habitat because ultimately, that’s what they’re dependent on for each phase of their life history for survival and reproduction.

*) Each species is dependent on a different kind of habitat, and the majority of species that breed, for example, in the northwest will go south. They depend on insects for food which are not really widely available in the winter. And so if you go to say, the Yucatan during the winter, you may find that 50 or more percent of all the birds that you encounter are migrants, would actually be breeding in the U.S., things like Magnolia warbler and Hooded warbler, American redstar, Black and white warbler, Woodthrush, Great catbird, there’s a whole suite of species that will be using often very different habitats and obviously different species of plants. The idea is that we want to have a suite of sites, both the breeding ground and the wintering ground which support theses migrant birds. And so a lot of the sites that are identified in the Tropics are really not being identified strictly because they support migrants. Often it’s the resident species that are much more vulnerable, that are much in much more trouble, but nonetheless the sites that are identified will also support these birds on their wintering grounds. And we also have sites that are extremely important. Most bird watchers, if you spend much time out in the spring, you can get really large concentrations of birds moving through, for example in May which is the peak of migration. That’s exactly why IMBD is held in May, because it coincides with the peak of spring migration. But not all places are the same when you look for birds, just the geography and where birds funnel through, the habitat that occurs in those places. People who are birders are familiar with, for example, Hawk Mountain is a key place to observe raptors during fall migration in particular. Or Point Pele, or Cape May, New Jerswy is an area where many, many birds funnel through in both the spring and the fall.
So if we can get quantitative data on which birds are using which site, then we have some science based way of determining which sites are the most important. And obviously we’re in no position to protect all habitats and all sites. So the thing that makes sense to do is find out what is the subset of sites that are most important, that protect the most species, and make sure that we have a suite of sites that we will focus our attention on to try and conserve birds. And that doesn’t always mean purchase of sites, it means working with landowners, getting easements to restrict some of the types of development that happen on sites ? if people are willing and wanting to do that ? sometimes it means purchasing sites, sometimes it means developing management plans in cooperation with landowners or state agencies, there’s a whole suite of things that can be done at sites to maintain them for bird populations. So one of the key points of the IBA program is that it focuses attention on all birds and all habitats, and the goal is to keep common birds common. We don’t want to get to the point where species become endangered. It causes conflicts in policy, and large amounts of money are needed to protect a species once they become endangered. If we can identify sites that are important when the birds are still common, work cooperatively with partners to protect some of these sites then we’ll be in the position to maintain populations of many species at levels where they won’t become endangered. And so that’s kind of the philosophy of the program. It’s just an efficient, cost effective way to do cost effective that’s proactive, not doing it when we’re in an emergency situation. You have better opportunities to work cleanly and clearly with people, and it seems to be an effective program. And we’re in the stage of identifying sites throughout the country, and this is going to be an ongoing program that’s being spearheaded by Audubon, and being done in collaboration with many other partner organizations to achieve conservation.

*) Conservation biology in general is part art and part science. I mean any science is part art as well. But the point is that we want to establish some quantitative, repeatable measures that we’re going to be able to evaluate the sites on. So we don’t just have a knee-jerk reaction and say, “this site’s important or that site’s important,” because everyone has their own pet sites they like. They’ve grown up there, they think it’s important. And we need to have some sort of quantitative way to evaluate sites. We want to back up any sites that we identify as Important Bird Areas with quantitative data that shows that yes, this site is being used by this suite of species and it appears as some information about the population of birds at those sites. And once again, we’re using criteria that have been developed by many, many people around the world to have some way of screening sites, kind of like if you picture a sieve with different levels of resolution, different size mesh, I mean we want to be able to capture a suite of sites that support the broadest set of species of concern and basically have that consistent mesh size. So we know that an Important Bird Area here means the same thing as an Important Bird Area in Argentina or Madagascar. That’s kind of what I mean, we’re setting a set of standards that are followed and have some meaning. For example, sites for congregatory species, ideally what you’re choosing is for a site to be of global significance. A site would hold maybe 1% of the global population of a certain species and that has some meaning, and we know what that is, so it’s interpretable and should be based on data. So that’s what I’m saying by it being based on science. It depends on how quantitative you want to get, how much you want to get into it. I think in a general sense that’s what we’re referring to.

*) We’re working to build this program into larger conservation initiatives throughout the country. For example, there’s an initiative called the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, and there’s many, many people, there’s groups like the North American Waterbird Conservation Plan, the North American Waterfowl Conservation Plan, The U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan, and Partners in Flight, and each of these groups are large cooperative efforts to develop plans to protect birds of various taxa, and overall the goal is to protect all birds, all habitats in line with what we’re doing. And one of the things those plans do is to evaluate population sizes and vulnerability, and based on that come up with some estimates, population goals. Often those population goals are translated into habitat goals. So they’ll say that we know that in this area of the country, this region, this physiographic region like bird conservation region, our goal is this many pairs of a species. That will provide some kind of stability to the population. And so those plans, coming up with those type of goals, often what is lacking is some quantitative, reasonable way to identify places on the ground, implement projects to achieve conservation to make those goals. And so the IBA program is one way of having a quantitative program to identify sites that, the most efficient way to achieve those goals, find the real hotspots, and focus on those first. And so that’s kind of where this program can fit into that larger perspective

*) Another thing is that often at these IBAs we want to encourage monitoring of populations. At many of these sites, there’s birds there because whatever’s being done is being done right. So that having the program doesn’t necessarily require lots of changes. It means maintaining the status quo because things are good. And so what we need is a long term monitoring program at many of these IBAs so that we can keep tabs om the sites so that they continue to maintain the populations for which they were identified. And so for example these monitoring programs can be conducted, again as a participatory program. And some aspect of the program will be conducted by biological professionals that work with state or federal agencies, and data that exists already. Many of the state agencies are developing monitoring plans which will specifically target the populations for which the site was identified. And so they may require different suites of protocols, monitoring protocols, to monitor shorebirds, for example, as opposed to warblers. And so these plans are being developed so that we have some long-term database to evaluate changes in the condition of the site, in terms of their ability to support birds. But another component is that there’s an awful lot of opportunities for citizen scientists to participate in this program. And that’s one thing in particular that Audubon is focussing on. Audubon is developing a large set of tools, and there’s a large program called Birdsource. It’s a collaborative program spearheaded by Audubon in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And this is going to allow birders around the country to go on to the computer, and when they visit a site they’ll be able to enter the data on what they’ve seen at the site with some standardized protocols, so we know how much effort was spent and so forth. But anybody will be able to get on the computer and enter their data online of what they’ve seen. So there’s advantages to having both kinds of data, data from professionals that are well trained and can use more intricate, demanding protocol. But also there’s a place for volunteer citizen scientists, because just based on the sheer number of birders ? I think that it’s well over 60 million people in the country consider themselves birders in some sense. And the information that we get about common birds, and so forth, and information that we get from these volunteers can be a huge database. An example of that is the Christmas Bird Count. That’s a program that Audubon started around the turn of the century. And that program is the longest continuing database on birds in the world, and it’s strictly done by volunteers. And so it’s becoming an extremely valuable program to monitor populations of winter birds. And so when you can engage citizen scientists, birders, at this level, to gather information, it does have a meaning in a long-term sense. Not only does it help us to keep tabs on the birds, but we’re also continuing to build a culture of conservation among the general public. And there’s a sense of participation in the conservation of the species themselves. So that’s kind of Audubons philosophy, we want to be encouraging the participation of the general public in longterm bird conservation.

*) One point that I’d like to make that is a matter of perspective. See, when I look at monitoring, what I’m looking at is you have a limited number of professionals that can go out around the country, and essentially they can get high quality, or fine-grained data on birds, but the amount of area they cover is so small, because there’s so few people, that it’s kind of a course-grained spacial scale. Whereas you can send out armies of thousands of volunteers that can go out, and the data they collect can be courser-grained, in other words they don’t have all the detail, the populations are not quite as standardized the way they collect it, but just the volume of data they can collect over a much greater area and have a finer grained spatial scale. Ken Robin started in the 1960s with the Fish and Wildlife service the largest database on breeding birds. People drive along a route 25 miles long, and every 1/4 mile they’ll stop and record birds every half mile. But that type of data is not as detailed as detailed projects that a researcher would conduct would conduct, for say, a thesis projector something. But they started noticing patterns of population declines in birds. For example, in a large track of forest it’s fragmented. This forest fragmentation means that you lose a disproportionate amount of species or individuals relative to the amount of habitats that’s lost. Lots of birds need larger tracks of forest. When you fragment it, you change the nature of the forest. In general, this problem of fragmentation has been thought of to lead to larger scale population decline. But they didn’t necessarily have that link. We know that when we look locally, we notice these patterns – when an areas fragmented, the area’s smaller and it supports less species – but it was only when they look in conjunction with the breeding birds survey data did they start to notice large populations across their range. And so they could put 2 and 2 together and make the inference that populations are declining, and these patterns of fragmentation can be inferred to be at least one cause to this kind of decline. And so it spurred a whole flurry of research back in the late 80s and through the 90s and continuing. It was that kind of analysis that led to a larger concern for birds, and particular migrant birds on their wintering grounds and led to the development of the IMBD. I mean some of the big questions were, well, what’s happening to our migrants if they’re starting to decline. Is it because of what’s happening on their breeding grounds? Or is it because of what’s happening on their wintering grounds? And you have these two camps, and obviously, there’s impact of habitat loss in both places. But in general, the alarms were sounded that we need to be more careful in our analysis to what we’re doing to the land and start thinking about the consequences of bird populations to other species. I mean these birds are essentially indicators of what’s going on in the environment in general. If we’re noticing the declines, then it’s the canary in the coal mine. And it sends up red flags. As a result of that, the IMBD is trying to focus attention on these issues. And like I said this year, our program is one of the programs that’s being highlighted in the IMBD.