F.E.A.S.T.

Problem: Help bird conservation in North America by participating for one day in the annual Christmas Bird Count.   Prior to the turn of the century, people engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas "Side Hunt": They would choose sides and go afield with their guns; whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won.   Conservation was in its beginning stages around the turn of the 20th century, and many observers and scientists were becoming concerned about declini...

Action: The Christmas Bird Count season is December 14 through January 5 each year. Your local count will occur on one day between those inclusive dates. If you have more than one local count, they will probably be conducted on different dates within the CBC season. You can pick the most convenient date, or participate in more than one count.   There is a specific methodology to the CBC, but everyone can pa...

Problem: Bird monitoring has played an important role in conservation planning in the northeastern United States for over 50 years, providing essential information on avian distribution, abundance, and population trends. Some monitoring initiatives also have quantified species-habitat relationships and population responses to environmental change.  Integration of monitoring into management and conservation has helped stabilize or restore several high-profile species that once were imperiled or extirpa...

Action: This handbook presents ten steps that optimize the value of bird monitoring when designing new programs, modifying existing ones, or applying results to the practice of bird conservation. These steps echo themes contained in an extensive bird monitoring literature and summarized in Opportunities for Improving Avian Moni...

Problem: Forests are the dominant type of land cover in the state, covering nearly two-thirds of New York State. Therefore, forests provide habitat (that is, a home) to most of the common wildlife in the state. For wildlife to thrive we must pay attention to the condition of our forests and make sure that they continue to provide habitat for all native forest species, now and into the future. This ...

Action: The purpose of this manual is to show how wildlife is related to different forest conditions in the northern hardwood forests of upstate New York. The manual supplies science-based information about how different methods of timber management (i.e., logging) change wildlife habitats, and how wildlife communities change (and how they may be similar) across different forest conditions. Ti...