News Release: Conservation Strategy for Landbirds in Sagebrush-Steppe and Riparian Habitats of Eastern OR and WA
The updated Partners in Flight Conservation Strategy for Landbirds in Sagebrush-Steppe and Riparian Habitats of Eastern Oregon and Washington (Rockwell 2022) brings forward recommendations to assist the planning efforts and habitat management actions of land managers and stimulate monitoring and research to support landbird conservation. This document encompasses sagebrush-steppe, riparian, and unique habitats in several ecoregions including the Owyhee Uplands, Northern Great Basin (sometimes referred to as Basin and Range), and High Lava Plains in Oregon, the Palouse Prairie in Washington, and the Columbia Basin in Washington and Oregon but also including an extension up the Okanagan Valley to the Canadian border.
The primary goal of this document is to promote the long-term persistence of healthy populations of native landbirds and associated habitats and ecosystems. To facilitate that goal, the document describes steps in a process that emphasizes providing quantitative, prescriptive recommendations for the desired range of habitat types and habitat conditions needed for landbird conservation. Combining this with other land management priorities to best meet multiple objectives will aid in the prevention of the listing of landbird species as threatened or endangered.
The Partners in Flight conservation planning process uses focal bird species as indicators of habitat components, determines current and desired conditions, recommends prescribed habitat components, and implements monitoring to measure treatment effectiveness. Our strategy for achieving ecologically functional habitats for landbirds is described through the habitat requirements of 19 focal species. By managing a suite of species representative of important habitat components, many other species and elements of biodiversity will also be conserved.
This document is an update of Conservation Strategy for Landbirds in the Columbia Plateau of Eastern Oregon and Washington (Altman and Holmes 2000). In Version 2.0, the conservation issues and biological objectives for habitat attributes and their focal species are updated where needed based on new data. It is hoped that the presentation of these types of quantitative biological objectives will not only stimulate conservation action on the ground but also stimulate data collection and analyses to test the models and professional judgment used to develop the objectives.
