Your Impact

Unrestricted gifts from our Chairman’s Council members are among the most important to maintain the Lab’s standards of excellence and impact. These funds enhance our dedicated funds so we can seize conservation opportunities and address time-sensitive threats to biodiversity as they arise. The 2020 Impact Report explains how we used unrestricted membership gifts in fiscal year 2020.

For the first time we can watch migration happen at the scale of continents for more than just a few species with eBird Status and Trends.

In early 2020, the Cornell Lab will launch its flagship scholarly ornithological website: Birds of the World.

As you know, on September 19 the Cornell Lab and partners from six other science institutions released the sobering findings of the biggest study of continental bird populations ever conducted—since 1970, the U.S. and Canada have lost almost 3 billion birds, more than 1 in 4 birds lost in just the past 50 years.

In the last decade, bird migration research has exploded, primarily because of fundamental advances in remote sensing and analytical technologies.

In September 2018, a workshop on “Bioacoustics in Conservation” at the Student Conference on Conservation Science in Bengaluru, India demonstrated the “ripple effect” of the Lab’s investment in building local capacity for applied and basic scientific research and conservation around the world.

Celebrate Urban Birds (CUBS) makes a powerful difference in the lives of low-income youth by connecting them to nature, in ways unavailable to them in urban and underserved areas, and highlights careers in conservation science.

In May of 2018, students, teachers, and guides in the Loreto region of Peru joined forces with Celebrate Urban Birds and CONAPAC (a Peruvian nonprofit organization focused on conserving the Peruvian Amazon) to launch the first regional citizen-science project in the area.

In early January, Jessie Barry and Chris Wood greeted 12 young birders in Paraty, Rio de Janiero, Brazil for the first Young Birders Event in Brazil.

Typically, I feature stories where programs have benefited from unrestricted membership funds. This month, I wanted to highlight a gift from The March Conservation Fund (MCF) that expands the Land Trust Initiative’s small grant program to offer three, new $20,000 grants, in addition to our ongoing $5,000 grants.

We sent a reporting team to the northeastern corner of Brazil to produce a story about one of the world’s most unique and endangered birds: the stunning, red-crested Araripe Manakin.

Tricolored Blackbirds have been disappearing from California’s wetlands since the 1930’s.