International Banding Workshop

John D Alexander, Klamath Bird Observatory Executive Director

This article is the fourth installment in the series Achieving Partners in Flight Strategic Goals and Objectives.

Partners in Flight’s ability to support full life cycle conservation and direct bird conservation resources toward the highest priority needs requires detailed information about bird populations. Constant effort mist netting and bird banding is a demographic monitoring technique that provides this needed information through data that can be used to quantify two important drivers of population change: reproductive success and survival. Such data help us understand where birds are most threatened within their life cycle. If reproductive success is low, then conservation on the breeding grounds might be effective in reversing declines. Low survival might instead require increased conservation efforts in migration corridors or on wintering grounds.

There is a need for increased capacity in demographic monitoring throughout the Americas. To meet this need Klamath Bird Observatory provides banding workshops in a variety of international arenas. In August 2012, we teamed up with the North American Ornithological Conference scientific committee, the Canadian Wildlife Service, the North American Banding Council, and Iona Island Bird Observatory to offer an intensive banding workshop in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Participants from Canada, the US, Mexico, Colombia, and Puerto Rico learned about bird identification, ageing and sexing techniques, safe handling procedures, and safe mist net use among other topics during this four day course.

For more information about KBO’s banding workshops visit our website page about science training.