The single most important goal of GBBO's
statewide, habitat-specific Bird Count is to provide
resource managers with sound, scientifically defendible
information for decision-making about Nevada birds and
their habitats.
For example, a manager of a project area with coniferous
forests might need to know how the bird community in
his/her area compares to other "typical" coniferous
forests in the whole state, or part of the state. Perhaps
there is a concern about disease outbreak, or intensity
of recreational use, or any number of other management
issues. His/her first use of the GBBO Monitoring data
base could be comparing data from the project area with
data from random coniferous forest points elsewhere
in the state, to find out how the area "ranks"
in terms of relative bird abundance and community composition.
In longer-term projects, more sophisticated problems
might be addressed, for example "how does the trend
of a priority bird species compare between my project
area and other sites of the same habitat across the
state?", or "how has bird diversity changed
since the last fire?", or a multitude of other
questions, depending on the exact needs the manager
has identified for the project area. GBBO offers to
assist sponsoring partners in exploring the potential
uses of the data for their specific management issues,
and in exploring options for data analyses. With prior
agreement, data analyses can also be entirely completed
by GBBO.
To benefit from the data network created under the
Program, resource managers are encouraged to participate
as sponsoring partners. This will ensure that their
project area and randomly selected sites across the
state will be sufficiently surveyed. The best options
for becoming a program partner are (1) providing funds
for GBBO to recruit enough surveyors to cover the project
area and accompanying random points, (2) providing point
count surveyors to survey the project area and random
sites supplied by GBBO's data base, or (3) a combination
of these two options. Other partnering options can be
discussed on a case-by-case basis. Also, GBBO will make
provisions to protect sensitive information and rights
for publication.
to find out more about becoming a sponsor/partner of
GBBO's Nevada Bird Count.
