Cornell program looks to amplify bird conservation efforts
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s land trust grant program helps partner land trusts with the bird community, helping to enable bird-focused habitat management and restoration on private lands.
In 2013, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology began its Land Trust Initiative to determine the best ways to maximize the mutual benefits that birds and land trusts can provide to each other. This year, the program is once again providing funding opportunities “to facilitate impactful projects that accelerate and amplify land stewardship and bird conservation on land trust properties and easements.” Land trusts can apply until March 1!
Did you know that the last full week in February is Bird Health Awareness Week? (Full confession — I did not.)
Bird Health Awareness Week is a chance to raise awareness about the challenges birds face in the wild and to educate the public on the essential role we all play in safeguarding their health. The fact that there is an entire week dedicated to the health of our small, feathered friends actually shouldn’t be all that surprising — after all, Americans LOVE birds. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s winter 2024 issue of Living Bird magazine, “[a]round 96 million people in the U.S. closely observed, fed or photographed birds; visited public parks to view birds; or maintained plantings and natural areas around the home for the benefit of birds in 2022. That’s more than 35% of the nation’s population aged 16 and over.”
That number comes from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey, and it’s a pretty big number. And there are countless reasons for birds’ popularity, including, as Julia Zarankin wrote for Audubon Magazine in the year following the COVID-19 outbreak, as an antidote to despair:
Birding has seen an explosion of interest as an ideal activity that can be practiced near home and with safe social distancing. During the initial waves of the pandemic last spring, for example, usage of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird app and participation in its Global Big Day hit new records … A growing body of scientific evidence also shows that the joy delivered by birds isn’t just anecdotal. Research increasingly links exposure to nature — and specifically, exposure to birds — with improved wellbeing.
They also play a crucial role in maintaining the delicate balance of our ecosystems. They are pollinators, assisting with plant reproduction, as well as spreading seeds into new areas. They are pest controllers, eating 400-500 tons of insects per year, including millions of mosquitos. They are sensitive to toxins and pollutants, serving as an early warning system that something is wrong in the environment.
How are land trusts helping to protect birds?
Lands conserved by land trusts are important to hundreds of common bird species and critical to species of conservation significance that have at least 50% of their breeding distribution on private lands. For example, grassland birds have declined by 53% since 1970, faster than any other group of birds. These species are almost completely reliant on private lands, which hold about 81% of grasslands.
The Cornell Lab’s land trust grant program helps partner land trusts with the bird community, helping to enable bird-focused habitat management and restoration on private lands. During the 2023 cycle, grants were awarded to land trusts from Oregon to Massachusetts, and from Texas to Michigan. Below, the Cornell Lab provides just a sample of the projects those grants are funding. You can find a full recap here.
Blue Mountain Land Trust (Oregon)
Blue Mountain Land Trust is engaging in restoration work across habitat types at Phipps Meadow, a 278-acre property surrounded by the Malheur National Forest that contains a diverse range of habitat types such as coniferous forest, sagebrush steppe, meadow, emergent marsh and the headwaters of one of the longest undammed rivers in the contiguous U.S, the Middle Fork of the John Day River. The land trust will bring in collaborative partners from the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, the North Fork John Day Watershed Council, the Malheur National Forest and other members of the John Day Basin Partnership. The positive ecological impacts will extend beyond property boundaries and benefit numerous habitat types. Learn more about Phipps Meadow here.
Willistown Conservation Trust (Pennsylvania)
Willistown Conservation Trust is partnering with Natural Lands in the Greater Doe Run area of Chester County, Penn., to help reverse the decline of grassland bird species through land management practices, research, education and community engagement. This initiative will support the Grassland Bird Collaboration and its goals to create a grassland bird conservation area comprised of working landscapes and existing preserves in southern Chester County, as well to facilitate conversations with landowners about declining birds and grasslands to grow a land conservation ethic within the region.
Willistown Conservation Trust will lead the effort to enroll at least 750 acres of preserved, privately held working lands in a delayed mowing commitment to conserve three focal grassland bird species: bobolink, Eastern meadowlark and grasshopper sparrow. Meanwhile, Natural Lands will use its network of publicly accessible nature preserves to manage land for grassland birds and promote these practices through demonstration areas and three educational events for enrollees and the community.
“By meeting our conservation goals, we will increase the value of conserved land within a large contiguous preservation belt,” said Zoë Warner, project manager for the Grassland Bird Collaboration. “The benefits of the land will go beyond ‘open space’ — it will provide valuable and essential breeding grounds to support local grassland bird populations.”
Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy (Michigan)
Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy will utilize funds from the Cornell Lab’s small grant program to improve the quality of nesting grassland bird habitat by managing invasive species at Arcadia Dunes: the C.S Mott Nature Preserve. When the conservancy protected the nearly 4000 acres of Arcadia Dunes in 2003, it included many acres of a fallow farm field that provided little ecological value. With the support of volunteers and numerous state, local and federal partners, Grand Traverse Regional converted 300 acres of fallow field to a more botanically diverse grassland habitat. With the Cornell Lab’s small grant funding, the conservancy will conduct grassland bird surveys before hand-pulling pulling invasive weeds, and by the end of the grant period, will have removed invasive spotted knapweed from 120 acres on the property as well as numerous invasive shrubs and trees from 60 acres of grassland habitat. Only 1% of Michigan’s native grasslands remain and this important habitat continues to be lost nationwide as development pressure and threats from invasive plants increase.
“With the support of The Cornell Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative we’ll turn the tide of woody invasive species invading the grassland and better protect the continuum of native grassland habitat throughout Arcadia Dunes,” said Chris Garrock, Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy’s director of stewardship.
Green Spaces Alliance of South Texas (Texas)
Green Spaces Alliance of South Texas is partnering with the Bexar Audubon Society to restore 55 of the 247 acres of the Haggard Ranch conservation easement to a native Texas Blackland Prairie ecosystem. The Haggard Ranch Prairie Restoration Project will complement Bexar Audubon, the City of San Antonio Parks Departments and the Alamo Master Naturalists’ efforts to restore native prairies on the southwest side of San Antonio. The selected acreage is nestled between two ponds, one of which is artesian-fed and a year-round water source for migrating birds on the central flyway corridor. The land clearing will remove invasive species, including Chinese tallow and chinaberry, enhance the water sources and wildlife habitat for grassland bird species and reintroduce a rare plant community native to South Texas. While undergoing this restoration, Green Spaces Alliance will conduct workshops and field days to engage landowners, student groups, volunteers and the broader local community about the benefits of native ecosystems for water conservation and wildlife habitat.
Returning the Haggard Ranch to Texas Blackland Prairie will create habitat for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department species of greatest conservation need and provide years of bird population monitoring in the central flyway. With the high concentration of historically underserved groups residing in South Texas, land conservation and restoration projects are vital for the health and well-being of the entire community and support underserved and under-resourced landowners in keeping and improving their farms and ranches in a place of rapid development.
Further reading about birds:
