New data summaries from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird platform will help state wildlife planners assess the status of bird populations living in or passing through their state – a critical tool in species conservation.
A team of data scientists from eBird, the participatory science platform, has compiled summaries of every bird species, in every state, and made them available for free online. These data summaries will assist states as they prepare their federally required 2025 updates to the State Wildlife Action Plans.
“As we began working more closely with government agencies and regional conservation partnerships, we realized we needed to significantly increase the accessibility of eBird information to these partners,” said Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez, deputy director of the Cornell Lab’s Center for Avian Population. Studies and the driving force behind the development of the state summaries.
“By providing these customized summaries, government agencies don’t have to struggle with big data and spatial tools. They get data that focuses on the area they are responsible for,” said Andrew Stillman, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cornell Lab. “It’s much more efficient and saves them time and money.”
State Wildlife Action Plans are critical to wildlife conservation in the United States, Stillman said. The plans must be updated every ten years and submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for approval. Approval will release funding from the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants program, which is used to proactively conserve birds and other species that make up each state’s biodiversity.
The 2025 updates will mark the second major revision to the nature plans since the first plans were completed in 2005. But this is the first time that summaries of eBird status data will be available to inform the revisions, making it easy for planners to identify which species are most needed. of nature conservation and to set priorities for where and when conservation measures should be taken.
Without eBird’s weekly, year-round bird density data, an important part of the big picture is missing. For example, tundra swans do not breed in Michigan and are not found there for most of the year. But for two weeks in March, 13% of the world’s population migrates through Michigan, making swamp and wetland habitats critical for stopovers on their long journey back to their Arctic breeding grounds.
The state summaries are updated each year with new population numbers from eBird. With the latest update in August 2024, planners can now also see which direction state-wide bird populations are trending: increasing, decreasing, or stable; and by how much.
“We will continue to refine and update the summaries so that states have what they need,” Stillman said. “We are also exploring expanding this customization across the two dozen migratory bird joint ventures in the US and Canada. Birds are not known for recognizing human boundaries and joint venture partnerships work across boundaries to preserve birds and the habitats they need, where they need it. The state planners are telling us, ‘Keep it coming.'”
