Recommendations for a North American Bird Monitoring Strategy

(With assistance from Dr. Stephen Baillie, British Trust for Ornithology, U.K., Dr. Jared Verner, U.S. Forest Service, Fresno, CA, Dr. Peter Vickery, Massachusetts Audubon Society, Richmond, ME, and Dr. Erica Dunn, Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa, Canada)

Based on the information presented at the 7 April 1998 workshop entitled: "An inventory/evaluation of North American bird monitoring programs" at the joint North American Ornithological Conference in St. Louis, MO, plus similar recent efforts in the United Kingdom (Greenwood et al. 1993, Furness and Greenwood 1993, Marchant et al. 1997) and Canada (Environment Canada 1994, Dunn et al. 1997), we present recommendations for coordination and improvement of monitoring efforts within North America.  There is an obvious need for a framework to ensure that shortcomings in monitoring are identified and addressed, and to ensure that results are integrated and used effectively to benefit North America's birds.

1. Goals and Assumptions
   1. Monitoring should aim towards integration of population and habitat assessments
   2. The many hundred bird species in North America require prioritization for monitoring

   3. Monitoring should be conducted with temporal and spatial scale in mind
   4. Whenever possible, monitoring coverage should include more than one type of survey, and where appropriate should include the breeding season
   5. Surveys must maximize efficiency in data collection and in integration
2. Coordination
   1. Improved coordination under an overarching North American bird monitoring program is needed
3. Activities
   1. A first priority needs to be an overall review and evalutation of the major regional and national programs to assess whether their objectives are being met
   2. Once the above evaluation has been done, a core group of broadscale monitoring programs should be identified for long-term national agency support; these should be the ones that include the most species in the most cost- mand labor-efficient manner
   3. Every effort should be made through the NABCI (above) that the priority core programs (above) receive long-term funding
   4. Trigger points or action thresholds should be developed to indicate when monitoring results need to trigger research and/or management action
   5. Use and adaptive resource management approach, at both small and larger scales
   6. Develop and use consistent database management protocols
   7. Training and guidelines should be required for monitoring
   8. Monitoring of habitat should be coupled with bird monitoring
   9. Integrated monitoring should be the goal wherever possible
   10. Wide dissemination of monitoring results should be emphasized