Today I attended a NYS grassland birds working group to address 3 billion bird loss:
- Road To Recovery: https://r2rbirds.org/
- 2019 Science publication, Decline of North American avifauna, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaw1313
- 2016 Landbird Conservation Plan can be found at https://partnersinflight.org/
Two WONDERFUL speakers: Recording link: https://meetny.webex.com/meetny/ldr.php?RCID=e4993f9cfed087fcc60edd93e87ed4ea
- Sara Barker of the Cornell Lab or Ornithology talked about their Land Trust Grant Program and their bird mapping tool
- Justin Proctor of Smithsonian’s Virginia Working Landscapes, talked about *innovative* working land practices to protect birds without harming farm viability.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
SARA’s TALK, scroll down for Justin’s
Cornell Land Trust Grant Trust Projects (for birds), birdtrust.org
Groups engaging farmers with bird-friendly practices
Interactive Decision Mapping Tool they have been developing (they got a new grant to move it to the midwest, forthcoming)
https://bit.ly/NBHCIMappingTool
TNC protected areas
species and associated habitats
They then combine layers to get the highest quality for a given species (30% of the target bird, in this case its the brown thrasher in Shrub/Scrub land area)
See also our afforestation report to compare how afforestation may impact bird species.
mapping tool webinar forthcoming.
on Feb 14, 2024! Contact Sara Barker.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
BIRD FRIENDLY Practices on WORKING LANDS – by Justin Proctor.
Many topics and ways of tackling the issue of bird loss
focussed on grassland farms (some row crops)
GOAL: build back biodiversity on working lands.
Types of experiments:
delayed hay practice to increase bird nest viability.
e.g. they estimate, that if farms can delay grassland harvest AFTER July 1, about 80% of the bird nests will fledge.
Incentives for delayed hay – Bird Friendly grassland BMP.
This intro program is $35/ac.
If the farmer commits further (longer) they can get $70/ac from NRCS.
NRCS practices that support this:
How birds are moving
Kestrel Box program!
- the high schools build the boxes
- the farms remove rodenticides
- Install Kestrel boxes!
- It’s working
Projects for illustrators – BMPS as VISUALs
Summary of conservation practices.
landowner speed-dating!
To note, Tim Boycott (at Cornell) is working on how solar impacts birds…
Please note, this blog is done in a spirit of sharing and ideation. I have no expertise in grassland birds.
