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Spring
1998
[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED
FEBRUARY 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: SPRING 1998.]
Monitoring
Restoration
Birders
are notorious for keeping meticulous track of what they
see: some maintain separate life lists, state lists, county
lists, yard lists, and year lists. Many have long participated
in formal volunteer monitoring efforts such as the Breeding
Bird Survey and Christmas Bird Count. In a place with as
many birders as the Chicago Wilderness, that means there's
an enormous amount of bird-population information out there.
But it's often been confined to the pages of specialized
journals, or to birder's notebooks, where it's not easily
available to those making land-management decisions.
"It's
been a perennial complaint of birders that they go out and
get a ton of data that doesn't become available to land
managers and others who could incorporate these findings
into management plans," says Judy Pollock of the Chicago
Audubon Society.
The
new Bird Conservation Network seeks to harness that information
by setting up a standardized monitoring system and regional
database that will allow birders, ornithologists, and land
managers to explore the effect of landscape changes on bird
populations.
"We
want to get birders involved at an early stage in the restoration
process," says Jerry Sullivan of the Cook County Forest
Preserve District. "Our ideal is that every restoration
site in the county would have its own bird monitor. We want
to make it possible for as many people as possible to participate
by offering monitoring protocols of different levels of
intensity. The information compiled can then be directed
toward a variety of research ends, such as comparing bird
populations in areas being restored with those in areas
not being restored."
This
breeding season the BCN is offering field classes aimed
at training monitors. It is also trying out a new survey
protocol that allows birders to explore sites either intensively
by doing a detailed nesting bird survey, or less intensively
by monitoring species' presence or absence. The data compiled
will be included in a database maintained at the Field Museum,
where it will be easily accessible to anyone with a computer.
"One
of the things that's great about Chicago Wilderness is that
it's such a huge area with so many institutions and bird
clubs," says the Museum's Debra Moskovits. "I think the
new BCN monitoring program is going to set a standard for
the nation."
For information on the BCN and the monitoring program, contact
Judy Pollock at (847)-864-6393 (evenings and weekends),
bobolnk@ix.netcom.com;
or Terry Schilling at (773) 275-8827 (evenings and weekends
only), tsrecord@ripco.com,
4880 N. Marine Drive #312, Chicago, IL 60640-4202.
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