Partners in Flight North American Landbird Conservation Plan

Abstract

T. D. Rich, C. J. Beardmore, H. Berlanga, P. J. Blancher, M. S. W. Bradstreet, G. S. Butcher, D. W. Demarest, E. H. Dunn, W. C. Hunter, E. E. Iñigo-Elias, J. A. Kennedy, A. M. Martell, A. O. Panjabi, D. N. Pashley, K. V. Rosenberg, C. M. Rustay, J. S. Wendt, and T. C. Will. 2004. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. 84 pp., 47 color plates, 21 text figures, 8 tables, 4 appendices. Available from Terry Rich, PIF National Coordinator (208-378-5347 or terry_rich@fws.gov) for a requested $10 donation.—In 1989, the Manomet Bird Observatory sponsored a symposium that gathered researchers concerned about perceived declines in populations of birds that breed in North America and winter in the Neotropics. The results of that symposium (Hagan and Johnston 1992) were serious enough that the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation sponsored another meeting in December of 1990, where the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Program, also called Partners in Flight (PIF), was formed to lead conservation efforts aimed at saving migrant birds. Concern for migrant birds led to a tremendous burst in research activity in the early 1990s, culminating in a massive meeting of researchers and managers at Estes Park, Colorado, in September 1992. Papers from that meeting appeared both as a General Technical Report (Finch and Stangel 1992) and as a publication from Oxford University Press (Martin and Finch 1995). With the Estes Park meeting, the massive committee structure that constitutes PIF was put into place, with the goal of developing state-of-the-art conservation plans that would “keep common birds common.” Although PIF has been functioning since that 1992 meeting, few widely visible products have resulted from PIF activities since the 1995 book. The proceedings of a 1994 cowbird symposium appeared in 2000 (Smith et al. 2000); a second international symposium was held at Cape May, New Jersey, in 1995 but did not produce any publications; and a research statement from the AOU that was started in the early 1990s finally appeared in 2002 (Donovan et al. 2002). The appearance of inactivity regarding migrant birds is changing: we now have this publication, we will see the results of the third international symposium on migrant birds soon (Ralph and Rich, 2004), and there will be a separate volume on migration (but without a conservation emphasis) early next year (Greenberg and Marra 2005). After my first reading of the Partners in Flight North American Landbird Conservation Plan, I wondered how much real “plan” there was. I expected details on how one saves migrant birds, but did not find them. I was a bit relieved when the first author of the publication noted at the recent AOU meeting that this really is a “broad-scale, multi-species assessment.” Because detailed planning is so regionalized, they argue that one cannot have a single plan to cover North America. Rather, this publication is the international overview of PIF and how it hopes to conserve migrant birds throughout the breeding, wintering, and migration habitats used by hundreds of species on two continents. This attractive, well-written volume provides the blueprint for PIF, the broad guidelines needed both to conserve birds and to mobilize the many conservation agencies required to preserve such wide-ranging species. It points out priority species and regions and sets population goals, leaving the detailed management work for the nearly 100 regional plans that are either finished or in the works (they can be found at www.partnersinflight.org). Rather than summarize the detailed structure of the plan, I will summarize the goals of this book with the following questions: (1) How do we choose priority species for conservation?—Populations of many species are doing just fine; we need to determine which species are vulnerable, so that we can focus limited resources on their future populations. The authors demonstrate the procedures used by PIF to develop assessment scores for each species, how species with high scores are put on the Watch List, and how other species with limited distributions are deemed Stewardship Species. Overall, the assessment process leads to a list of 192 species of “Continental Importance,” which constitute the focus of the PIF plans. (2) Where do we focus our conservation efforts for migratory birds?—A migrant may spend several months of its annual cycle in two locations, then use a variety of sites when moving between breeding and wintering habitats. Only one of those locations may be problematic and in need of conservation activities, but determining where limiting factors occur is difficult. Using assessment scores from various species, the book presents many maps depicting the distribution of vulnerable species throughout the annual cycle. The authors also present summaries based on avifaunal biomes, point out important areas for those regional lists of birds, and note where species go each winter. (3) What are the general principles f