A Recent Review by Prairie Habitat Joint Venture Conservation Partners Crop and livestock production provide food necessary for people, however some farming practices can be devastating for natural ecosystems. The conversion of wetlands to agricultural landscapes has cascading impacts on wildlife and the ecological services those habitats provide, such as flood mitigation, maintaining water quality [...]
Since 2021, the Sea Duck Joint Venture has supported a large-scale collaborative research project to deploy Argos satellite tracking devices on American Common Eiders (Somateria mollissima dresseri). Eider populations have been declining across the southern part of their breeding range since the early 21st century. These changes are hypothesized to be caused by the rapid [...]
In Southwest Colorado, fuels specialists and researchers have come together to experimentally evaluate different silvicultural treatments for enhancing pinyon-juniper ecosystem health and reducing fire risk. This interdisciplinary team has implemented replicated silvicultural treatments that vary in spatial complexity and amount of thinning in pinyon-juniper woodlands spanning an elevational gradient. A major goal of this effort [...]
The Sonoran Joint Venture has been supporting long-term ecological monitoring for decades. This spring we partnered with the Tucson Audubon Society (TAS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to revive a Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) bird banding station in the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area in southeast Arizona. This station was previously [...]
While “Motus” may seem like the latest bird conservation buzzword, the Motus Wildlife Tracking System (Motus) is a program of Birds Canada that was launched in 2014. It has continued to gain popularity as a tool to study the ecology and conservation of migratory animals. Radio telemetry has been used since the 1960’s to track [...]
A Different Perspective on Spring Migration I have never seen a Yellow-billed Loon in full breeding plumage, which isn't surprising when you consider the range map below. Living in southcentral Alaska, and seeing other species of loons with some frequency, the Yellow-billed Loon piqued my interest. Ten years ago they were a candidate species for [...]
By Amelia DuVall, Seabird and Habitat Restoration Ecologist, California Institute of Environmental Studies This article was originally published by the Sonoran Joint Venture and reposted with permission. Scripps’s Murrelets typically lay two-egg clutches. Chicks spend just two days in the nest before heading out to sea with parents (photo courtesy of Darrell Whitworth). On a [...]
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s (FWS) Migratory Bird Program is currently developing ProjectFlockTogether: an online crowdsourcing platform that will invite bird enthusiasts and citizen scientists to participate in important, cutting-edge conservation research. Each year, the FWS conducts aerial visual surveys by flying small planes over North America’s wetlands and coasts, in order to monitor [...]
Across the globe, citizen scientists are informing bird conservation by reporting on their local birds. The information sheds light on species distribution, population trends, and how landscape level changes are affecting bird habitats. Engaging in citizen science also promotes a greater understanding of the role and values of birds in the natural world. The upcoming 2016 [...]
Bird conservation partners in the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture (ACJV) are now closer to having a full complement of Bird Conservation Region (BCR) Plans that cover our entire geographic area. Currently, BCR plans exist for the Atlantic Northern Forest (14), Lower Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Plain (13), New England/Mid-Atlantic Coast (30), Piedmont (29), and the eastern [...]