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Teaming for Bird Conservation in the Americas
by Jack Capp, USDA Forest Service and Dave Mehlman, The Nature Conservancy

Given the high percentage of migratory bird species that are important to the United States yet spend the majority of their lives outside its borders, U.S. bird conservation efforts need to reach beyond these borders as well. Driven by this awareness, we at The Nature Conservancy and the USDA Forest Service’s Office of International Programs recently formed a new international partnership to help conserve the migratory birds that winter in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our goal is two-fold: to conserve species of high concern while abroad and to protect the large investments already made in conserving their breeding grounds. Our work outside the United States emphasizes protecting bird species and their most at-risk habitats, building capable conservation partnerships, and putting technical and financial resources on the ground.

Species of high concern are identified on the U.S. Endangered Species List, Canada’s Species At Risk List, and by the various North American bird conservation plans. Upon comparing these species’ migration destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean with the ecoregional priority areas developed by The Nature Conservancy and others, the most important areas for migratory bird conservation actions south of the United States become clear.

To immediately focus our efforts, we identified bird groups and sites that share common threats and contain high numbers of birds of concern. What emerged from this exercise were restricted-range neotropical migrants, shortgrass prairie birds, and high-priority migration corridors. We then devised three conservation strategies for the next 3 years.

One strategy is ecoregional planning, which identifies landscapes that support the greatest biodiversity in an ecologically defined area. In 2002, we began developing ecoregional conservation plans in Mexico and Central America.

Recognizing that fire is a major and natural determinant of bird habitats, the second strategy is ecological fire management. In Mexico, we are working with partners to form an ecological fire management plan in several protected areas to help sustain vital bird habitats.

Monitoring of bird populations and their habitats is critical for focusing priorities and gauging accomplishments, and is, therefore, an important third strategy. With our Mexican partners, we are monitoring shortgrass prairie birds on the Janos Grasslands and establishing a management plan for the Saltillo Grasslands Protected Area. These grasslands are also crucial wintering areas for Sprague’s pipit, long-billed curlew, burrowing owl, ferruginous hawk, and other prairie birds. Likewise, we are monitoring Bicknell’s thrush with our partners in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere and the endangered Kirtland’s warbler with our partners in the Bahamas. This winter, eight Kirtland’s warblers were sighted and six banded at a single site in the Bahamas, exceeding all previous winter sightings and bandings combined.

Millions of dollars have been spent in the United States on conservation and recovery efforts for these and other bird species in decline, yet without comprehensive information on their wintering grounds, we will not be able to recover nor sustain the more than 350 species that spend most of their lives outside the United States.

For more information, contact Jack Capp, USDA Forest Service, Office of International Programs, 1099 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20043, (202) 273-4725, jcapp@fs.fed.us, or Dave Mehlman, The Nature Conservancy, 322 Tyler Road NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87107, (505) 344-1732, dmehlman@tnc.org.

Partnering for Youth
by Sharon Rushton, STEP OUTSIDE and Joe Duggan, Pheasants Forever

“When we heard that Pheasants Forever wanted to expand their youth-education program and to work with other conservation organizations to make that happen, we were thrilled,” said Jodi DiCamillo, STEP OUTSIDE Program Administrator. “Their goal meshes perfectly with ours.” STEP OUTSIDE encourages outdoorsmen and women to act as mentors, inviting someone who has never experienced their sport to spend a day with them enjoying their favorite outdoor activity.

“We’re very excited about this opportunity to partner with STEP OUTSIDE,” stated Pheasants Forever President Howard Vincent. “Last year our chapters held more than 300 youth-mentor events. This year we’re planning for 600.”

Through this partnership, young sportsmen and women will be able to practice target shooting, work with hunting dogs, and learn how to clean and cook game. They also will learn about sporting ethics, wildlife biology, habitat improvement, and conservation, and best of all, they will participate in a pheasant hunt. “We attract many of our youth from hunter education classes,” explained Vincent. “Unfortunately, it’s not a forgone conclusion that students who go through hunter education classes will actually hunt. Students may have an interest but have no one to mentor them. That’s where the partnership comes in.”

The idea for the youth-mentor hunts was born in Wood/Lucas County, Ohio, where Pheasants Forever chapter members wanted to provide youth with an upland-bird hunting experience. The chapter’s Youth Program Coordinator, Lou Best, related their experience: “We had 40 youth at our first mentor hunt and 107 youth hunters and 60 volunteers at last year’s hunt.”

Best believes that 80 percent of the youth become hunters. All participants go away with a better understanding of the high ethics held by hunters and of the hunters’ commitment to conservation and habitat improvement.

“I’ve had many dads who had never hunted before, but because their son or daughter wanted to go on the hunt, they went,” said Best. “Now they hunt together.” Best continued, “Youngsters from our first hunt have now become guides for other youth. A young woman from our first-year group said that the youth hunt had a positive effect on her life—she is now in college studying environmental science.”

The Wood/Lucas chapter is just one of the 600 Pheasants Forever chapters keeping our hunting heritage alive. Pheasants Forever Senior Wildlife Biologist Jim Wooley explained it this way: “The Pheasants Forever Youth Program is important for a number of reasons. Those of us who appreciate hunting can pass on that tradition to youngsters who otherwise would not have that experience. We give youngsters a chance to use a gun wisely and safely. We offer them an opportunity to have instruction in the field with a mentor who has a lot of experience and who knows the ethical and right way to hunt. We also get them involved in wildlife conservation. These are all important things to do for kids—they are also the right things to do.”

For more information, contact Jodi DiCamillo, National Shooting Sports Foundation, STEP OUTSIDE, 11 Mile Hill Road, Newton, Connecticut 06470, (203) 426-1320, jdicamillo@nssf.org, www.stepoutside.org, or Joe Duggan, Pheasants Forever, Inc., 1783 Buerkle Circle, St. Paul, Minnesota 55110, (651) 773-2000, pf@pheasantsforever.org, www.pheasantsforever.org.

Alien Mudsnail Invading Western Waters
by Craig Springer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Its life history reads like a cheap 1950s sci-fi film. The New Zealand mudsnail—an alien that reproduces by cloning—lives for days out of water and can get a toe hold in most any water, warm or cold. It has no predators. You might think what you just read is a treatment for a horror flick, but the trouble is, it’s a true story unfolding in the West.

“Anyone that works around water needs to know about the New Zealand mudsnail,” said Bob Pitman, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service invasive species biologist in the Southwest Region. “Knowledge is the best preventative tool to keep this invasive animal at bay.”

A single mudsnail may be only the size of a pepper flake up to a sand grain, but living unconstrained by natural checks, they may soon carpet lake and stream bottoms. Up to 300,000 mudsnails will cover a square meter of stream bottom, replacing native snails and other invertebrates like mayflies and caddisflies—primary food sources for fish. Apparently, these minute creatures can pass through the gut of trout undigested.

How mudsnails infiltrated the United States is unknown, nor is it known how long they’ve been here. They first were discovered in Idaho’s Snake River in 1987. Since then they’ve turned up in Montana’s fabled Madison and Missouri Rivers, the Yellowstone River in Wyoming and Montana, the Owens River in California, and the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona.

The danger in New Zealand mudsnail infestations lies in the fact that they have no natural predators or parasites in North America. And that means nothing can keep them from spreading—except you. Precisely how mudsnails move from water to water is conjecture, but it is fairly assumed that people move them inadvertently. And that’s where you come in.

To keep from spreading the New Zealand mudsnail, Pitman recommends that you always clean your waders and sampling gear after each use with a soapy solution and then let them dry in the sun. Since the mudsnail can live out of water for several days, it is important that your gear dry for several hours after cleaning. If you have the luxury, donning a second set of waders when you move between waters would lend added security that you are not spreading the undesirables.

Following these guidelines can help protect the waters where you work and play. Education is a powerful tool, and isn’t that how Steve McQueen foiled The Blob?

For more information, contact Craig Springer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of Fisheries, 500 Gold Avenue, SW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102, (505) 248-6867, craig_springer@fws.gov.

Paradise Defined: Ricefields and Crawfish Ponds
by Jay Huner and Michael Musumeche, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Over half-a-million acres of agricultural wetlands are found in Louisiana north of the Gulf of Mexico to the I-10 corridor. These ricefield-crawfish-pond systems have long been famous for attracting millions of waterfowl, a massive presence of wintering and migrating shorebirds, and a veritable potpourri of wading birds. Forested riparian areas adjacent to these artificial wetlands host large populations of resident songbirds and migrants gathering energy for or following trans-Gulf migrations.

In Louisiana, rice is cultivated in shallow water during the warm months. Rice seeds can be planted in shallow water but the water must be removed in 1 to 2 days so the young plants can establish themselves. A shallow “flood” can then be applied for weed control. If rice is “dry” planted, it is flooded after the young plants are established. Water is removed for rice harvest from July to September, but the fields are often refilled in the fall to dispose of rice stubble, control weeds, attract waterfowl, and raise crawfish. Crawfish survive in burrows in levees during warm months and emerge with young in the fall. These little crustaceans thrive on “wasted” rice seeds and the myriad of organisms that feed on the decomposing rice stubble.

The central Gulf’s coastal agricultural feast annually attracts more than 270 bird species. In fact, Louisiana is known for its expanding wading-bird populations—regrettably, the exception, and not the rule, in North America. Their prey base of invertebrates and small vertebrates associated with crawfish ponds has been directly correlated to the expansion. Waterfowl, shorebirds, terns, and gulls, are among the others partaking of the ponds’ repast. Raptors add to the ambiance of this important artificial wetland habitat with nesting bald eagles attracted to sites supporting large wintering American coot populations. The rapping bills of woodpeckers are often heard in the ponds’ adjacent riparian areas where vireos, thrushes, warblers, orioles, wrens, buntings, cardinals, and blackbirds are also found.

The practice of growing rice in the warm months and crawfish in the cool months represents one of the most well documented sustainable agriculture success stories in America. This practice also creates crucial habitat in an area estimated to have lost over 1 million acres of coastal wetlands during the past half-century.

The best time to visit Louisiana for birding is during the fall and spring migrations, September through October and April through May. Exceptional waterfowl hunting is enjoyed from mid November to mid January. Although agricultural wetlands are located largely on private property, most are adjacent to secondary roads west of the Atchafalaya Basin and along and south of Highway 190 to the coastal marshes. Agricultural wetlands are managed for wildlife habitat on two public-management areas: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Lacassine National Wildlife Refuge near Lake Arthur, Louisiana, off Louisiana State Road 14 and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ South Farm Recreational Area near Ramah, Louisiana, just north of I-10.

A birder’s and hunter’s paradise awaits—it’s just a Louisiana ricefield/crawfish pond away.

For more information, contact Jay Huner, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Crawfish Research Center, 1031 W. J. Bernard Road, St. Martinville, Louisiana 70582, (337) 394-7508, jhuner@louisiana.edu.

Which Way to the WPA?
by Randal Williams, Rainwater Basin Joint Venture

The Rainwater Basin lies within 17 counties in south-central Nebraska. The area’s wetlands provide a spring migration stopover for tens of millions of waterfowl—most notably snow geese, greater white-fronted geese, mallards, and northern pintails. During the peak of spring migration, the basin’s Harvard and Massie Waterfowl Production Areas (WPA) may see 500,000 to 1 million ducks and geese stopping in on a single day. Add to that 300,000 to 400,000 shorebirds, plus bald eagles, peregrine falcons, whooping cranes, and songbirds, and you can see why conservation is so important in the basin.

“The conservation task is too overwhelming for any single organization or agency,” said Steve Moran, coordinator for the Rainwater Basin Joint Venture. “The combination of partners’ energies, intellects, and efforts better serve the basin’s landscape and communities.”

Let me give you an example of what Steve means. I farm in the basin and work part time for the joint venture as a local coordinator, which gives me the opportunity to work with various government agencies, nonprofit organizations, businesses, farmers, and the like. In discussions with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) refuge managers, I was told they needed entrance signs on some of their WPAs. Signage, they said, would help birders find their way around the WPAs during spring and fall migrations, and it would help sportsmen identify which WPAs were closed to the spring snow goose hunt.

About that time, my son, Jesse, was looking for a service project to complete the requirements for his Eagle Scout Award. I suggested that a sign-building and installation project at the WPAs might work. He liked the idea and set about making it happen. The refuge managers endorsed the project and agreed to pay for making signs for three of the WPAs.

The Spring Wing Ding Committee of Clay Center had an interest in the project, too. It conducts tours and directs visitors to WPAs every year as part of its weekend spring-migration festivities. The Committee paid for the signs at the Massie WPA. The joint venture paid for the signs’ framing materials. The Scouts constructed the frames and, with the help of the Service, installed them. The Little Blue Natural Resource District helped by donating weed barrier from their tree planting program to use around the signs, and Union Pacific contributed railroad ties for the landscaping. The Service and Nebraska State Department of Roads finished the project off by constructing a turn-off area at Massie, which will be used by Wing Ding birders and other visitors to the WPA.

“Projects like this one really bring people together, because so many groups benefit,” said Jesse. And so did my son—he earned his Eagle Scout Award. (Sometimes fathers do have good ideas.)

Virtually everyone in the Rainwater Basin has something they can contribute to conservation, whether a Boy Scout or a giant corporation. The joint venture’s strength lies in its ability to bring people and projects together in a way that leaves everyone feeling good and doing good.

For more information, contact Randal Williams, 302 Road Y, Davenport, Nebraska 68335, (402) 364-2478, rw45141@alltel.net.

Filling the GAP
by Diane Noserale, U.S. Geological Survey

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and its cooperators are launching a 5-year study in the Great Lakes basin to identify and map unprotected areas of substantial richness in aquatic animal species. They will also determine how free those habitats are from human disturbance. By locating the places that support a full range of aquatic species, scientists hope to help decision makers identify gaps and set priorities for conservation.

"Our goal is to keep common species common," said Donna Myers, coordinator of the USGS Great Lakes Aquatic Gap Analysis Project, a part of the USGS Gap Analysis Program (GAP). "The GAP analysis grew out of the realization that a species-by-species approach to conservation does not address the continual loss and fragmentation of natural landscapes," said Myers. "The most efficient way to protect animal species is to protect their habitats. But protection can't be successfully accomplished until we know where these places are located."

The Nature Conservancy estimates that the Great Lakes region supports more than 30 communities of plants and animals that are found nowhere else on Earth. The Great Lakes and their watersheds provide habitat for approximately 300 species of fish plus diverse numbers and types of freshwater mussels, crayfish, and aquatic insects. The rivers, streams, wetlands, and coastal areas of the Great Lakes system are key to fish and wildlife that depend on them for habitat. However, what we know about the aquatic biodiversity of this 200,000 square-mile region is incomplete. At the same time, there are many threats to the aquatic biodiversity of the Great Lakes Region including invasive species, agricultural development, forestry, and urban expansion.

"Restoring and preserving the diversity of species of the lands and waters of the region is an important activity because biodiversity in the Great Lakes is strongly tied to the economy, health, and quality of life of the surrounding human population through its positive effects on tourism, recreation, agriculture, drinking-water quality, and fish consumption," said Myers.

The USGS is cooperating with more than 200 other natural resources agencies in 49 states. The Great Lakes Aquatic GAP project will provide maps, data, information, and scientific studies of basinwide, lakewide, and statewide patterns in aquatic biodiversity. The project will involve cooperative relationships with state, local, and nongovernmental agencies in developing and applying this information to state and regional conservation activities.

"The natural resources agencies in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin have taken a strong interest in the project," Myers said. "State-level studies, which are components of the entire project, will begin first in Michigan, Wisconsin, and New York, followed by Minnesota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. A pilot state-level study is in its third year in Ohio."

The USGS Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is leading the regional effort to combine data from all the Great Lakes states. Funding of just over $5 million is planned for the effort from 2003 through 2008. The program’s results will be well worth it.

For more information, contact Donna Myers, U.S. Geological Survey, 6480 Doubletree Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43229-1111, (614) 430-7715, dnmyers@usgs.gov, http://www.gap.uidaho.edu and http://www.glsc.usgs.gov/GLGAP.htm.

The Raptors’ Ridge
by Donald Heintzelman

When it comes to The Kittatinny Raptor Corridor Project, it is often asked, “Why focus so much time, money, and effort on this mountain?” The reply is simple: “Because the Kittatinny-Shawangunk Ridge and its adjacent lands are an irreplaceable national treasure. It is one of the world’s most famous autumn raptor-migration corridors, stretching approximately 256 miles in length from near New Paltz, New York, and across northwestern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania to its terminus near the Maryland state line.”

Bake Oven Knob, Hawk Mountain, and Waggoner’s Gap in Pennsylvania formerly were popular hawk shooting sites where thousands of migrating raptors were killed for sport. Today, these places are among the State’s premier hawk watchsites, strung like natural ornithological pearls on an emerald necklace that is the ridge. Thousands of raptors, along with waterfowl and other birds, are counted from these locations. The long-term raptor-migration data collected at Bake Oven Knob and Hawk Mountain, for example, are particularly significant. Being among the most accurate and comprehensive of the raptor data bases, its information is used to assess population trends.

The Kittatinny-Shawangunk Raptor Corridor, which includes land extending outward for approximately 5 miles from the north and south bases of the ridge, contains a segment of the Appalachian Trail and a variety of important wildlife habitats, including rocky outcroppings, woodlands, woodlots, old fields, wetlands, rivers, creeks, and farms. Rural and suburban residential areas and business/industrial sites are interspersed among these. The habitats offer important short-term stopover sites for migratory raptors, waterfowl, and neotropical songbirds and year-round habitat for a myriad of other wildlife.

The Wildlife Information Center, Inc. (Center), in Slatington, Pennsylvania, launched The Kittatinny Raptor Corridor Project in 1992. The project’s primary goals are to conserve biological diversity, protect and preserve habitat, and promote sustainable uses of habitat along the ridge’s entire length. To accomplish those ends, the Center

• fosters public concern, appreciation, and support for permanent protection and preservation of the ridge’s habitats through education;
• works cooperatively with conservation and citizen organizations to achieve protection in the corridor’s crucial wildlife areas;
• continues to expand its scientific/conservation literature and rephotography data bases; and
• encourages creation, restoration, or enhancement of stopover habitats within the corridor, including backyards and industrial parks.

A new home for the Center is also in the works. The Center is purchasing an 800-acre tract on the west side of Lehigh Gap, a geologically spectacular setting near Bake Oven Knob, that will house its headquarters and a wildlife refuge. Working with partners from various governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, industries, and foundations, the Center will restore the environmentally degraded site to its former glory.

Endorsed by nearly two dozen local, regional, state, and national agencies, institutions, and organizations, The Kittatinny Raptor Corridor Project is an unprecedented undertaking in the fields of raptor research, conservation, and education. The project provides the model for raptor conservation in other nationally or internationally important wildlife areas or corridors.

For more information, contact Dan Kunkle, Executive Director, Wildlife Information Center, Inc., P.O. Box 198, Slatington, Pennsylvania 18080, (610) 760-8889, wildlife@fast.net, www.wildlifeinfo.org.