Arizona Important Bird Areas Program

The purpose of the Important Bird Area Program is to identify a network of sites that maintain the long-term viability of wild bird populations while engaging the public to conserve those areas of critical habitat. The Important Bird Area Program exists on several scales. This is a global program founded by BirdLife International the 1980’s. Since then, over 8,000 sites in 178 countries have been identified as IBAs. The IBA partner for the United States is the National Audubon Society which began to establish individual IBA programs state by state in 1995. The NAS oversees all of the state-level IBA Programs.  The US IBA Program has identified over 2,500 sites covering more than 370 million acres of habitat!

The Arizona IBA Program was established in 2001 and is co-administered by Audubon Arizona and the Tucson Audubon Society. Scott Wilbor of the Tucson Audubon Society laid the groundwork for and coordinated the AZ IBA Program solo from 2001 through 2004 and continued with the program until 2011. AZ IBA is currently coordinated by Jennie MacFarland at Tucson Audubon and Tice Supplee at Arizona Audubon. The Arizona Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program is an exciting, active, field-oriented, community-engaged, science-based and conservation-focused program to benefit Arizona’s bird populations of greatest conservation concern, and other native biodiversity, and their most critical habitats and sites.