After completion of the Nevada Bird Conservation Plan
(Neel 1999), Nevada Partners-in-Flight
(NV-PIF) recognized that conservation strategies for
Nevada birds and their habitats will be most effective,
if they take place within the framework of a statewide,
habitat-based bird monitoring program. NV-PIF requested
that the Great Basin Bird Observatory play the lead
role in the design and implementation of this program,
and the first phase of the Nevada Bird Count was initiated
by GBBO in May 2002. The program has grown to a scale
that allows statistically meaningful evaluation of how
priority species and whole bird communities of Nevada's
major habitats are performing over time.
Click here
to find out more about NV-PIF's Bird Conservation Plan
for Nevada (Neel 1999).
Program Objectives
Science Objectives
The long-term objective of the Nevada Bird Count is
to provide a scientifically sound data base for evaluating
status and trends in bird populations for each of Nevada's
major habitats. The program provides data for analyses
at different spatial scales, including state-wide assessments,
habitat-wide assessments, as well as comparisons of
specific project sites with similar sites in the rest
of the state.
The shorter-term objectives of the program include using
the statewide data network to assess habitat suitability
for priority bird species in order to generate widely-applicable
habitat models to a variety of bird-habitat management
questions. The main audience for the program outputs
of public and private resource managers, who are encouraged
to use the findings of the Nevada Bird Count for management
planning and to conduct additional analyses of the data
for their resource planning purposes.
Finally, the program provides a unique opportunity to
integrate small-scale bird inventory, research, and
monitoring efforts into a statewide data base. The advantages
of using the same approaches for smaller-scale efforts,
such as one-time research projects, site inventories,
and restoration effectiveness monitoring include the
ability to compare results to statewide measures of
bird populations in similar habitats. All partners of
the program are strongly encouraged to plan their short-term
bird data collections in the context of the large-scale,
long-term Nevada Bird Count program in order to make
use of the large data network provided by the program.
For assistance in project planning designed to be integrated
with the Nevada Bird Count network, the program partners
are encouraged to consult with GBBO.
Contribution to Bird Conservation
GBBO offers the Nevada Bird Count as a service to partnering
agencies and groups that are directly engaged in, or
plan to be engaged in, bird conservation projects in
Nevada. The program will be fully tailored toward providing
this service, and in the spirit of Partners-in-Flight
and similar programs, users of the data toward bird
conservation planning and evaluation will receive priority
over all other uses. We consider our contribution to
bird conservation scientific in nature, providing value-neutral
data to those agencies and organizations that need bird
inventory and monitoring data, or are about to embark
on making decisions about bird populations of Nevada.
