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Important Bird Areas Program / Tucson Audubon Society (This article was first published in February 2005 in the Vermilion Flycatcher, newsletter of the Tucson Audubon Society. To receive the newsletter, become a Friend of Tucson Audubon.) 2005 starts a new era for Audubon’s Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program in Arizona. Audubon Arizona has hired a new Director of Bird Conservation, Tice Supplee who has worked for Arizona Game and Fish Department for the last 29 years and been a leader at Sonoran Audubon since 1999. Tice will now oversee the IBA Program in Arizona, and is charged with continuing the identification and recognition of IBAs across the state, pursuing the conservation of IBAs, and being Audubon’s Arizona lead for conservation policy. Tucson Audubon remains an integral part of Arizona’s IBA Program. I continue as IBA Conservation Biologist at Tucson Audubon. Our focus is now southern Arizona IBA conservation, and coordinating the IBA avian science program. With the conservation of important avian habitat in the Santa Cruz and San Pedro watersheds as our focus, we continue to assist land managers in southern Arizona. Over the last 2 years we have worked hard to build the Audubon’s IBA Program in Arizona. We conducted outreach to all eight Arizona chapters to nominate and provide data for IBA identification. We formed a Scientific Review Committee of 14 biologists and bird experts. We researched and put together additional IBA nominations. We held three IBA technical meetings which to date have identified 26 IBAs in Arizona, with an additional 69 potential IBAs with high probability of meeting IBA criteria. A catalog of these IBAs was produced in November, a project supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Sonoran Joint Venture. Over these last two years we have helped permanently protect 215 acres on the Santa Cruz and San Pedro drainages, and helped landowners in the Huachuca Mountains initiate habitat restoration on their 160-acre ranch. Lastly, we have coordinated 11 IBA teams in the collection of IBA data. Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Arizona Bird Conservation Initiative program continues to be our primary supporter and has increased funding for the program each year, for which we are most grateful. 2005 is an exciting time for us! We have completed a draft Avian Habitat Conservation Plan for the U.S. Upper Santa Cruz River Riparian Corridor in Santa Cruz County. This will lead to a landowner document for best practices in avian habitat and sensitive species management in Arizona, projects funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. In 2004 we received funding from the U.S. Forest Service International Programs (USFSIP), which allowed us to conduct a synthesis of avian data collected on the Santa Cruz River both in the U.S. and Mexico. New funding from USFSIP in 2005 will allow us to collect new avian data throughout the watershed to further expand our knowledge of bird populations in order to evaluate conservation effectiveness and conservation needs of this shared watershed. In 2005 we will broaden Audubon volunteer involvement to pursue this goal. In order to help achieve this goal Arizona State Parks has partnered with us to train Audubon volunteers and state park personnel to conduct avian monitoring at IBAs. See adjacent box for our IBA workshop announcement. With your participation we are set to accomplish much for the conservation of birds and their habitat in 2005! We look forward to hearing from you!
Bird questions? Check Birding | General questions? Contact: Tucson Audubon Society | Webmaster: Email This page was updated on 02/21/06 |