State of the Birds 2022 – There is hope for declining forest bird species
Published by 33 leading science and conservation organizations and agencies, including Klamath Bird Observatory (KBO), the 2022 U.S. State of the Birds report presents state-of-the-art scientific results that show alarming declines in western forest birds, combined with stories about important partnerships that offer hopeful opportunities for restoring our bird populations. To help us tell the story about how sustained forest management investments in the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion may benefit birds, we invited Executive Director Terry Fairbanks from the Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative (SOFRC) to provide a testimonial. KBO is bringing multiple voices to the table to coalesce around a forest conservation movement to ensure investment in forest restoration benefits birds and people.
KBO is collaborating with SOFRC to use birds as indicators of forest restoration progress. The 2022 State of the Birds Report shows where our Western Forest birds are declining, highlighting the Rogue Basin as a priority area of concern. As we restore our forest from years of fire suppression using birds to guide conservation action and evaluate restoration success, we are telling a complete ecosystem story. KBO Executive Director John Alexander, a contributor to the Report, gave a live interview with Jefferson Exchange host Geoffrey Riley, discussing this story. If you missed this interview, you can listen to it HERE.
To read the report, CLICK HERE or learn more about what the report tells us about birds in the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion HERE.
Support ALL bird conservation by purchasing the Conservation Science Stamp set. Proceeds from this year’s Science Stamp support our international bird banding program. Bird banding data tell us if birds successfully breed in an area—indicating a healthy habitat. It also tells us if birds are surviving migration, information that informs international conservation efforts. Our partnerships with the University of Guadalajara and San Pancho Bird Observatory in Mexico help us study the full lifecycle of migratory birds, including this warbler. KBO’s bird banding internship program also helps us train the next generation of bird conservation leaders.
klamathbird.org/jprstateofthebirds2022
Dick Ashford has served on the KBO Board since 2005, with two terms as Board President (2007-2009, 2010-2013). He also served on the board of the American Birding Association from 2007-2013 (Chair 2009-2010). A continuing student of birds and birding, Dick especially enjoys leading hawk-watching trips to Oregon’s Klamath Basin. He has taught a Hawk ID Workshop at the annual Winter Wings Festival in Klamath Falls for over 10 years.
From 2020-2022, a small team of researchers from KBO, USFS, and USGS captured adult Western Purple Martins breeding in coastal Oregon at night while they roost in their nestboxes. We have captured martins on the Siuslaw National Forest and McKenzie River Trust lands. We band the birds and outfit them with lightweight archival GPS tags that fit like a backpack with two leg loops to track their movements. There’s just one catch – to have a battery small and lightweight enough for a small songbird to carry, the tags cannot transmit data, only store it. Returning tagged birds must be recaptured following a year-long round-trip migration to retrieve the tag and its precious geospatial data. Due to these challenges, most tracking studies of this type have relatively small sample sizes; nevertheless, they have revolutionized our understanding of bird migration. Precise data on the winter whereabouts of a few Western Purple Martin individuals are enormously important compared to the absence of any precise data that we had before this study. Our objectives are to find locations of roost sites used during migration and winter and use this information to identify conservation partners and actions that can be taken during the non-breeding season.
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BIOLOGIST Nora contributes to KBO’s Informatics and Avian Data Science Program. In this role, she provides support for the Avian Knowledge Network, works with partners to scope and develop data-driven decision support tools, and is involved in data analysis, reporting, and publications.
