Tracking Landscape Performance for Integrated Bird Management

1. Tracking Landscape Performance for Integrated Bird Management Joint Venture Meeting Austin, TX December, 2006

2. PLAYAS Landscape’s ability to function for waterfowl, shorebirds, waterbirds, landbirds The PAST The FUTURE Cropland Cropland Cropland Sand Sage Sand Sage Riparian Riparian Riparian Other Other Mid-Grass Mid-Grass PLAYAS CRP CRP CRP Shortgrass Urban Shortgrass Urban Urban

3. How Much is Enough? Groups/Species Prairie-Chicken Ducks Songbirds Habitats CRP Wetlands All Condition Native Wet Lots Result More chickens More Ducks More songbirds • Competing interests • Little cooperation • Every species for itself, etc...

4. Birds use habitat in many, many ways – tracking can’t be linear Conditions grazed moist-soil wet fragmented pitted Fenced w/shrubs Groups/Taxa Dabblers Cranes Bl-cr Night-Heron Lesser Prairie-Chicken Long-billed Curlew Lark Bunting etc. Habitats Playas Mid-grass Riparian Shortgrass Sand Sage Marsh etc. Neither can thinking or planning.

5. Concept -- A Hierarchical Approach • AREA (BCR part of a state) • ASSOCIATIONS(habitats with a suite of associated species) • CONDITIONS (Variations within habitat associations) • SEASONS(Breeding, Non-breeding, months, etc) • SPECIES (Found in each condition of each association) “In BCR 18 - NM” “Shortgrass” “with few shrubs and moderate grazing” in the “ breeding” season for “Lark Bunting”

6. Landcover

7. A link from landcover to birds (usually density, duck-use-days or shorebird-use-days).

8. Goals

9. MODEL Acres of Habitat in an Area X Density/use-days of a Species in an Area= Carrying Capacity of a Species in an Area ÷ Population Objective for the Area = % of Goal for Area Then, if needed, develop habitat to meet goal.

10. HABS: A tool that manages the concept, landcover, models, linkages and goals.

13. End Product: Area Implementation Plan (AIP) • Simple, specific, updateable • Shows current and desired acres of habitat • Describes specific habitats and priority species for work in that area • Represents habitat goals over 30 years and reveals the magnitude of conservation work needed. • Provides support for developing new conservation initiatives or tweaking existing ones • Provides justification for budgetary requests AIP BCR 18 Colorado

16. Jamestown NAWCA

19. Conclusion There are 159,129,630 acres of land in PLJV of which approximately 6,428,000 are permanently developed, leaving 152,697,742 to support birds, of which 12,891,769 need to change type or condition to meet priority bird goals.

20. Lesser Prairie-Chicken Model: • Minimum of 5,000 acres of appropriate contiguous habitat (a large block) • Min. 2,000 acres of native prairie • Max. 3,000 acres of CRP and/or cropland • No 4-lane roads bisecting and < 50 ac. other roads • < 100 acres of all water types • CRP/cropland and native prairie min. ac. switched for shinnery Densities/acre: .0125 in Mixed Grass Prairie .0156 in Sand Sage Prairie data from KS, R. Rodgers pers.comm.