Management Strategies for Reversing Declines in Landbirds of Conservation Concern on Military Installations: Predictive Modeling of Landbird Populations on Military Installations

Abstract

Abstract : The primary goals of the research documented in this report were 1) to incorporate management guidelines to reverse population declines of Neotropical migratory birds and other landbird species into current and proposed land management actions on United States Department of Defense (DoD) military installations, especially those actions designed to increase military readiness and to sustain military ranges and operating areas for future use; 2) to predict changes in demographic parameters of birds of management concern that breed in the vicinity of where the range sustainment management is implemented; 3) to, where possible, report the effectiveness of the implementation of avian management guidelines, and 4) to implement an adaptive management cycle in which annually, using new data, we refine the species-landscape models and subsequently adjust the management guidelines to better achieve the conservation goals. Previously we prepared management guidelines for reversing avian population declines based on species-landscape models that describe the relationships between landscape-level habitat characteristics and six demographic parameters (adult population size, population trend, number of young, young trend, mean annual reproductive success, and trend in reproductive success) for ten bird species listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2002) as Birds of Conservation Concern (BCC) breeding on eight DoD installations. These guidelines were formulated through Legacy Project Number 00103, which extended from FY2000 through FY2005. The original species-landscape models were based on eight years (1994-2001) of MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) data from 78 stations on 13 military installations (or groups of nearby installations) that were funded through Legacy Project Number 930451.