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Arizona
Important Bird Areas Program / Tucson Audubon Society
Introduction to Important Bird Area Program
The IBA ProgramWings into a New Season
By Scott Wilbor, Arizona’s Important
Bird Areas
Program Coordinator (Reprinted from September, 2006 Vermilion Flycatcher
newsletter)
With fresh air in the wings of Tucson Audubon, the Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program begins a new season. The IBA Program spans from International, to National, to State, to Audubon chapters, and is focused on recognizing and conserving our most important sites for birds at all these levels.
The program is science-based, and IBAs are “identified” by state and national Audubon science committees. IBAs may support significant populations of endangered or species of concern. They may support significant concentrations of birds (waterfowl, waterbirds, shorebirds, raptors, landbirds), or be sites with rare or exceptional representative habitat and bird assemblages, or with long-term research or educational programs. To date, we have 26 Identified IBAs in Arizona. Our Arizona IBA Program is jointly administered by Tucson Audubon and Audubon Arizona. Each organization has its role, with Tucson Audubon leading the avian science component and southern Arizona site conservation, and Audubon Arizona leading the site identification process and northern site conservation efforts.
Why is this program important? Arizona is bursting with new residential and commercial developments that are eating up our desert, grasslands, river valleys, and mountain slopes. New development clears and fragments native habitat every day, bringing hoards of people to the state. As such, it increases pressure on our water resources.With more people, we see more off-road vehicles in our formerly wild areas and increased recreation pressures. Old threats continue to persist as well, such as grazing in riparian habitats, forestry operations, utility infrastructure, and mining and other resource extractive industries. These factors are all interacting to threaten our valuable bird habitats and populations.
The IBA Program pro-actively works to ameliorate these threats: 1)We identify important sites to birds and other wildlife (hopefully before they are threatened).We then make this information known to the agencies and landowners who steward these sites; 2)We engage citizens in helping collect bird species, population, and habitat information.We conduct sciencebased investigations and analysis, and contribute to statewide bird population monitoring; and 3) We promote the conservation of IBAs and important avian habitat across the state. As such, we participate in land use planning, public land management planning and acquisition, and we actively promote the conservation of critical sites and habitats.
Our most recent accomplishments include publishing of four IBA Avian Habitat Conservation Plans and a Riparian Habitat Guide for private landowners. Two of these Conservation Plans cover sites we are working to help conserve in southern Arizona, the Upper Santa Cruz River riparian corridor and Sabino Creek. These documents are available online, and for viewing or purchase at the Tucson Audubon Nature Shops.
Where do you fit in? Do you have a bent for using your birding passion to help collect bird population data at one of our potential or existing IBAs? These may be sites where we need good quantifiable data that can be reviewed by our IBA science committees, or they may be sites where we are contributing bird data for statewide bird population monitoring in cooperation with our partners, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Give us a call; we are putting together new IBA Bird Survey Teams right now that will conduct bird surveys seasonally from September through the end of the 2007 breeding season.
Arizona's Important Bird Areas (to date)
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