Conservation goals for the next decade

We must take action to help birds at risk. Several bird conservation plans have already been developed for North America (see Conservation Planning Index).

Implementing these plans is imperative. To evaluate our success, we must set attainable, yet progressive, goals for the next decade.

The following points are taken from an article in the Auk Quarterly Journal of Ornithology (Fitzpatrick, J. W. 2002. The AOU and Bird Conservation: Recommitment to the Revolution. Auk 119: 907-913.) See the article for full text.

Conservation Goals for the Next Decade

• Habitat management must be in place to stabilize all high-priority species throughout their life cycles in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Every bird species ranked today as having high conservation priority should be under habitat management intended to stabilize or increase its overall numbers.
• Substantial new funding should support all-bird, all-season conservation. Federal, state, and private infrastructures for funding conservation initiatives today are insufficient to meet the challenges of the all-bird approach, especially as it expands to incorporate Mexico and the Caribbean. Using the highly successful waterfowl model as inspiration, we must invigorate the efforts to dedicate new funds for upland, colonial waterbird, shorebird, and tropical birds and their habitats.
• Wildlife managers, policy makers, and the public should fully embrace all-bird conservation as a high priority for resource allocation and program implementation.
• Non-government Organizations (NGOs) must shepherd bird conservation. Collaborating NGOs have the freedom lacking in public agencies for setting long-term objectives, engaging in self-criticism, adjusting management strategies in mid-course, measuring results, and willingly dividing the labor required to achieve long-term conservation.
• Birds must be monitored throughout their breeding, migration, and wintering ranges.
• Improved monitoring of long-term population trends is needed for each bird species. Individual populations naturally increase and decrease. Learning more about these natural fluctuations would inform long-term management guidelines.
• More precise estimates of total population size is needed for each species.
• Programs that raise public awareness of birds and the need for their conservation should be developed and implemented.
• Citizens must engage in numbers befitting a revolution. With birdwatchers numbering in the tens of millions, the huge pool of committed amateurs has enormous potential to assist in monitoring bird populations and measuring their responses to land-management alternatives.