Community Engagement for the Birds!

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Originally appears in the Fall 2018 issue.

MIGRATING BIRDS already face enormous challenges from predators, unpredictable weather, starvation, and exhaustion. The least we can do is reduce/remove the other hazards that we have put in their way. To accomplish this, what follows is a conservation model that would include multiple community resources and combine the efforts and commitment of the following three parties: your local nature center, volunteer citizen scientists, and several cooperating corporations. Each has a specific role to play.

The goal would be to reduce human-made threats to bird migration, while recovering and preserving suitable temporary habitats along migration pathways. At the heart of this model is the local nature center with its professional staff of naturalists/educators who benefit from the strong support of readers like you who regularly visit nature centers and would be able to volunteer in this effort.

The nature center would first recruit and organize volunteer citizen scientists whose mission would be to map migrating species’ flyways and suitable habitats along those flyways, and to count and collect dead and injured birds. The nature center would then dramatically display the data collected, including injured birds in rehabilitation, in an exhibit which would solicit the sympathy and support of the public. Backed by this public support, the nature center would present these results to the relevant corporations, soliciting their cooperation in minimizing the hazards presented by their structures and installations.

This three-pronged conservation model — managed by the local nature center, supported by volunteer citizen scientists, and complemented by cooperative corporations — has a significant chance to suceed in saving migrating birds.