**Intermountain West Coordinated Bird Monitoring Program**

**Progress Report**

Jonathan Bart and Ann Manning

March 1, 2006

(*NOTE: The permanent IWCBM web site address is given in this document
but at present \[4 Mar 2006\] the web site is still under development;
it may be found at http://iwcbm.dev3.fsr.com*/)

**Contents**

[Introduction 1](#introduction)

[Aquatic Bird Survey 1](#aquatic-bird-survey)

[Designated Areas 2](#designated-areas)

[Site Descriptions 2](#site-descriptions)

[Existing Surveys 3](#existing-surveys)

[Potential additional surveys 4](#potential-additional-surveys)

[Collection of Existing Data Sets 4](#collection-of-existing-data-sets)

[Specific Management Issues to Address
4](#specific-management-issues-to-address)

[Roles and Responsibilities 4](#roles-and-responsibilities)

[Conclusion 5](#conclusion)

[Terrestrial Bird Surveys 5](#terrestrial-bird-surveys)

[Data Management 5](#data-management)

[Analytic Tools 5](#analytic-tools)

# Introduction

This Progress Report describes the status of the Intermountain West
Coordinated Bird Monitoring (IWCBM) program as of March 1, 2006. An
overview of the program is available at the IWCBM home page,
<http://greatbasin.nbii.gov/iwcbm/>. Since the beginning of the IWCBM
project in early 2005, most work has been focused on the Aquatic Bird
Survey. This work is described in the next section; other progress is
described in the final section.

# Aquatic Bird Survey

The Aquatic Bird Survey is being implemented using a four step approach
(Table 1). The program overview emphasizes tasks 1 and 2, particularly
guidelines for preparing site descriptions. This document describes
progress on identifying designated areas and current and potential
surveys. It then suggests possible management issues to be addressed
during the first few years of the Survey.

Table 1. Approach for initiating the IW Aquatic Bird Survey

1\. Describe general purpose of the survey

2\. Create the needed infrastructure

Focal area and species

Sites to be covered

Site descriptions

Current and potential surveys

Data management system

Organizational support

3\. Choose specific management issues to address

4\. Implement the survey for those issues

## Designated Areas

Collaborators on the program have identified 424 important areas for
aquatic birds in the IW (Table 2). The numbers per State vary from 18 to
52, with Idaho having the largest number. The IWCBM web site,
<http://greatbasin.nbii.gov/iwcbm/>, has reports for each State. Careful
review of these reports is needed.

Table 2. Number of designated areas and their importance to aquatic
birds.

  ---------------- ----------- ------------- -------------- --------------
                   Number of   Number known                 
                   areas       to be                        
                               important                    
                               for...                       

  State                        Waterfowl     Waterbirds     Shorebirds

  Arizona          42          15            32             13

  California       40          20            22             19

  Colorado         44          0             29             22

  Idaho            52          7             32             4

  Montana          21          2             12             13

  Nevada           48          15            20             2

  New Mexico       37          9             20             12

  Oregon           40          30            28             13

  Utah             41          17            27             20

  Washington       18          7             4              3

  Wyoming          41          23            1              0

  All              424         145           227            121
  ---------------- ----------- ------------- -------------- --------------

## Site Descriptions

Site descriptions have been prepared for 137 (34%) of the designated
areas (Table 3). Idaho has prepared descriptions for nearly all the
areas it has identified. Montana, Nevada, and Colorado have also
prepared descriptions for many of their sites. Less work has been done
on preparing survey descriptions for designated areas, however some
descriptions have been prepared for sites in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and
Colorado. Preparing descriptions for the rest of the sites should
receive high priority.

Table 3. Status of descriptions for designated areas in the IW.

  --------------------- -------------- ---------------- ------------------
  State                 Prepared       Not prepared     Proportion
                                                        prepared

  Arizona               0              42               0.00

  California            0              40               0.00

  Colorado              17             27               0.39

  Idaho                 50             2                0.96

  Montana               15             6                0.71

  Nevada                25             23               0.52

  New Mexico            0              37               0.00

  Oregon                0              40               0.00

  Utah                  30             11               0.73

  Washington            0              18               0.00

  Wyoming               0              41               0.00

  Grand Total           137            268              0.34
  --------------------- -------------- ---------------- ------------------

## Existing Surveys

Decisions about which surveys will be conducted at each site will be
made by managers and biologists who have the resources to survey the
sites. To facilitate the decision-making process, we collected
information on surveys being conducted at the designated areas. We
defined 5 surveys:

> 1\. Aerial survey (primarily for waterfowl; any time of year but
> mainly winter in the IW)

2\. Ground survey (usually for all aquatic species; any time of year)

> 3\. Secretive marsh bird survey (for rails, bitterns, grebes; breeding
> season)

4\. Migrating shorebird survey (migration season; shorebirds only)

5\. Colony survey (breeding season; all colonial, aquatic species)

Our current estimate is that 388 surveys for aquatic birds are currently
being conducted in the IW including \>100 aerial surveys and
ground-surveys for all species. Fewer, but still significant numbers, of
the other three surveys are being made. The reports for each State
provide detailed information about where these surveys are being
conducted in each State. This information should be reviewed by groups
in each State.

Table 4. Summary of known aquatic bird surveys at designated sites in
the intermountain west^1^.

  ------------------------- ----------- -------------- ----------- ----------- ---------- ---------
  Survey                    Aerial      Ground-based   Secretive   Migrating   Breeding   All
                            Waterfowl   waterbird      Marshbird   Shorebird   Colonies   surveys

  Existing survey           117         119            44          29          79         388

  No survey at present      28          112            73          93          64         370

  Volunteers could conduct  7           30             40          30          34         141

  Volunteers could help     0           13             4           5           4          26
  conduct                                                                                 

  Staff would conduct       0           46             23          42          24         135

  Survey would be difficult 21          23             6           16          2          68

  Information lacking       263         191            293         276         242        1265
  ------------------------- ----------- -------------- ----------- ----------- ---------- ---------

## Potential additional surveys

We also determined what additional surveys might be conducted at each
site. No presumption was made that these surveys *should* be conducted.
This information was gathered solely to help address questions such as
"If we wanted to survey at least 80% of the sites with significant
numbers of migrating shorebirds (or any other group), how many new
surveys would be needed?". We also collected information on whether
volunteers could do the survey entirely or in part, and whether the
surveys were viewed as extremely difficult by biologists familiar with
the sites. Results showed that there are about as many opportunities for
additional surveys as there are current surveys (Table 4). Most suitable
sites for aerial surveys are being surveyed whereas less than one third
of the sites suitable for migrating shorebird surveys are being covered.
Based on our results, volunteers could conduct 141 surveys and could
help conduct 26 additional surveys.

## Collection of Existing Data Sets

Table 3 above, reporting that 388 surveys of aquatic birds are made each
year in the IW provides dramatic confirmation of the need to collect the
existing data. The results of these surveys are undoubtedly useful to
the local managers, and some of the data, particularly the aerial survey
data, are collected in a central location. Much of the data, however,
exists only on paper and is gradually being lost or at becoming
irretrievable. It thus seems worthwhile to make a substantial effort to
collect these data sets and store them in digital and permanent form. We
have recently received one data set and re-formatted it so it can be
stored in a data base and would be interested in collecting other
similar data sets.

## Specific Management Issues to Address

Participants in the Aquatic Bird Survey should begin considering what
specific tasks they would like to work on during the coming few years.
Three possibilities are:

1\. Initiate a long-term trend survey.

> 2\. Initiative a 3-4 year project to determine distribution, abundance
> and habitat relationships.
>
> 3\. Address one or more very specific issues such as effects of water
> level on aquatic birds.

Selecting one or more projects, such as the ones above, will make it
easier to motivate people to complete the site descriptions and the
information on current and potential surveys, and to prepare survey
protocols.

## Roles and Responsibilities

The Western Working Group is the primary forum for discussing the IW
Aquatic Bird Survey and gaining agreement on major components of the
Survey. A coordinating committee for the IWCBM program holds conference
calls 1-2 times per month. The IW Joint Venture and BCR Coordinators
have agreed to lead the effort to encourage increased coordination of
existing surveys and decisions about whether to initiate new surveys.
USGS scientists are taking the lead on design. Many State biologists are
playing key roles in establishing ?????

## Conclusion

We recommend that attention be given to the following tasks:

> 1\. Review and revision where needed of the designated areas and the
> current and potential surveys at each.
>
> 2\. Preparation of site descriptions.
>
> 3\. Selection of the management issues to be addressed during the
> coming 3-4 years.

4\. Decisions about which surveys to continue or initiate.

5\. Acquiring existing, high-quality data sets.

6\. Completion of the data base and analytic tools.

# Terrestrial Bird Surveys

A few conference calls have been held to define objectives of this part
of the IWCBM (in particular whether to emphasize a long-term
trend-monitoring program or one or more short-term programs). Work has
also begun on a nocturnal bird monitoring program.

# Data Management

Much remains to be done on the data management system. The web site is
functional, though it will be improved significantly in the coming few
months. We have had several conversations with a database designer but
serious work has not been initiated yet. We have developed a proposed
design but need to prepare examples of how data from different surveys
would be stored in the database. We anticipate collecting data on
spreadsheets which will be e-mailed to us for the next several months or
a few years. We anticipate gradually switching to an internet-based
approach but serious questions remain -- at the regional and continental
scale -- about how much to rely on a distributed system and what central
repositories will be created. Thus, we anticipate proceeding slowly on
attempting to automate data entry. Data retrieval and analysis, on the
other hand, can be organized as soon as we find the time, hopefully
during the next 3-4 months.

# Analytic Tools

Work is only just beginning on this part of the IWCBM program. See the
"IWCBM -- Analytic Tools" report for recent accomplishments and plans.