Forests for the Birds: Conserving America’s Forest Birds Webinar Series

The series tells a compelling story about forest bird population declines, partnership opportunities, and forest management actions that can support bird population recovery and sustainability.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Forest Ecology Working Group, National Conservation Training Center, and Migratory Bird Program have developed a 12-part monthly lecture series to address the 50-year decline of 3 billion birds through partnerships, conservation science and forest management.

After engaging with the entire series, participants will be able to:

• Describe the decline of forest-dwelling birds in the U.S., identifying causes and risk factors
• Apply species vulnerability assessment tools to identify priority bird species
• Describe the importance of forest management planning from landscape to local scales, recognizing essential forest community composition and structure structure
  Something temporarily or permanently constructed, built, or placed; and constructed of natural or manufactured parts including, but not limited to, a building, shed, cabin, porch, bridge, walkway, stair steps, sign, landing, platform, dock, rack, fence, telecommunication device, antennae, fish cleaning table, satellite dish/mount, or well head.
  
  Learn more about structure for bird conservation
• Identify forest conservation and habitat management alternatives

Disclaimer: This webinar series is for educational purposes only. The opinions, ideas or data presented in this webinar series do not represent USFWS policy or constitute endorsement by USFWS. Some of the materials and images may be protected by copyright or may have been licenses to us by a third party and are restricted in their use. Mention of any product names, companies, web links, textbooks, or other references does not imply Federal endorsement.

Additional webinars recordings for this series can be found in the Partners in Flight resource library.

Webinar 1 - Loss and Recovery of North American Birds

Details: Ken Rosenberg discusses the findings of his influential co-authored paper published in Science (Rosenberg et al. 2019), which describes how North America has lost about 3 billion birds since 1970. The declines are not restricted to rare and threatened species; those once considered common and widespread are also diminished. About one third of this decline are forest dwelling species, including wood warblers, aerial insectivores, finches, and thrushes. Ken discusses the threats of forest habitat loss, climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

Learn more about climate change , pesticides, and other factors, and identifies opportunities for bird population recovery. This work has major implications for forest ecosystem integrity, the conservation of forest birds, and policies associated with the protection of birds and the ecosystems on which they depend.

Presenters: Jerome Ford (USFWS) and Ken Rosenberg (Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and American Bird Conservancy)

Recorded: March 16, 2021

Duration: 57 Minutes

Resource: Q & A

Webinar 2 - Managing and Conserving Forests for Avian Biodiversity

Details:

Doom and Gloom? - Broad-sale drivers of breeding habitat and population changes (including climate and land-use change/ habitat fragmentation, forest degradation).

If you build it, will they come? - Fine-scale drivers of bird habitat: silviculture, other disturbances.

They Way Forward - Guidelines for determining breeding habitat amounts (thresholds, population viability, historical range of variation) and how to plan forest landscapes that work for bird conservation.

Presenters: Matt Betts (Oregon State University)

Recorded: April 20, 2021

Duration: 62 Minutes

Resource: Q & A

Webinar 3 - Climate Change, Adaptation and Impacts on Forest Bird Recovery

Details: Maria Janowiak and Steve Matthews first talk about climate change impacts on forests and habitats, and then talk about impacts on birds. They introduce the three interrelated issues of shifting seasons, shifting stressors and finally shifting species. For example, growing seasons have increased ~2 weeks in past century. In addition to overall shifts in the seasons, there’s strong evidence that the climate is becoming more extreme and variable. They also introduce tools for adapting forest dependent birds and their habitats in light of climate change, such as the Climate Change Tree and Bird Atlases (www.fs.fed.us/nrs/atlas).

Presenters: Maria Janowiak (U.S. Forest Service) and Steve Matthews (Ohio State University)

Recorded: 5/18/2021

Duration: 65 Minutes

Resource: Q & A

Webinar 4 - Blueprint for Success - How and Where to Focus Bird Conservation

Details: Speaker Bob Ford, who is the USFWS - National PIF Coordinator, discusses the importance of landscape scale conservation design in the context of how landscape influences stand level management decisions. He explains how the “2016 Partners in Flight Plan” is a blueprint for regional forest bird conservation across the country. He also explains tools like the "half-life" metric, which considers area importance to better understand breeding bird populations needs. Bob also introduces cases studies like the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture’s success with the management of bottomland hardwood forests in the Mississippi alluvial valley.

Presenters: Bob Ford (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Recorded: 6/22/2021

Duration: 55 Minutes

Resource: Bottomland Hardwood Forests (video)

Webinar 5 - The Habitat Matrix - Stepping Down Bird Management from Landscape to Stand

Details: Speaker Jeff Larkin of Indiana University of PA and the American Bird Conservancy discussed the importance of implementing forest bird conservation at biologically meaningful scales both spatially and temporally. He describes stepping down landscape scale bird conservation plans and strategies to the forest stand level. He also talks about how essential good forest management is to creating a diversity of forest structure structure
Something temporarily or permanently constructed, built, or placed; and constructed of natural or manufactured parts including, but not limited to, a building, shed, cabin, porch, bridge, walkway, stair steps, sign, landing, platform, dock, rack, fence, telecommunication device, antennae, fish cleaning table, satellite dish/mount, or well head.

Learn more about structure , and how that assists many forest bird species trying to survive in forests that offer very little diversity of habitat structure.

Presenters: Jeffrey L. Larkin (Indiana University of Pennsylvania and American Bird Conservancy)

Recorded: 7/20/2021

Duration: 66 Minutes

Resource:  n/a

Webinar 6 - Stand-level Forest Management: Desired Forest Conditions for Wildlife

Details: Speaker Randy Wilson of the USFWS discussed how the ecosystem based approach to bird conservation shifted the conservation paradigm from a resource based, opportunistic approach, towards a science-based, strategic pursuit of sustainable landscapes. That approach however requires managing for population sustainability at multiple spatial scales and then translating bird habitat needs into forest management prescriptions. Desired forest conditions (DFCs) for wildlife are the mechanism the FWS has used to implement this approach.

Presenters: Randy Wilson, Station Leader (Migratory Bird Field Station, Jackson, MS. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Recorded: 8/17/2021

Duration: 59 Minutes

Resource: Bottomland Hardwood Forests (video)