Resources

The existing network of bird conservation partners and resources provides an excellent opportunity for land trusts to engage in conservation at different scales. This Resource Directory is designed especially for land trusts: bringing many of the resources together in one place and helping navigate the resources to find what is pertinent to land trusts. The resources can be useful for land trusts’ funding proposals, community outreach, strategic conservation planning, land acquisition and easement justification, management plan development, and monitoring.

The resources on these pages are organized by four categories – Engaging People, Planning, Management Guides, and Presentations and Publications.

The Engaging People tab provides information about outreach and education tools, as well as citizen science projects. Citizen science engages the public in collecting information about birds. Many such bird citizen science projects already exist, allowing land trusts to easily tap into online monitoring tools, volunteers already collecting information, or even useful data for lands owned, managed, or stewarded by land trusts.

The Planning tab provides information about bird conservation partnerships and conservation plans. Many of these plans are split into four bird guilds: land birds, shorebirds, waterbirds, and waterfowl. There are also plans that transcend type of bird. The plans provide information about the most important species, habitat needs, and necessary conservation actions at multiple scales. Further, the partnerships offer many other resources for a land trust to tap into.

The Management Guides tab lists Best Management Practices (BMPs) by ecosystem type. BMPs lay out the ideal management approaches, based on known science. If followed, they should allow a land trust to effectively create or maintain appropriate habitat for a suite of bird species and, often, other wildlife.  This list was originally generated by Partners in Flight, a cooperative partnership dedicated to achieving greater success in conserving bird populations.

The Presentations and Publications tab provides examples of the Lab’s latest talks and reports on land trusts and birds, including a presentation about how land trusts can best utilize eBird and the top ten tips for bird professionals interested in working with land trusts on bird conservation.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of resources.  It is instead a starting place and a work in progress. If there are additional resources that you’ve found helpful and would like added to the site, please email us with the resource name, category in which it should be listed, online link, and a description of how it’s useful to land trusts. We value your contributions!

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