Our Sierra Nevada program encompasses a wide variety of projects studying, monitoring, and conserving birds throughout the Sierra Nevada region, often in partnership with government agencies or other land managers. Areas of emphasis include determining the effects of land management practices, wildfire, and climate change on bird populations; conducting surveys for rare or imperiled species; monitoring avian population trends in national parks; and formulating conservation strategies that solve management problems and safeguard species.

In our flagship program in the Pacific Northwest, IBP collaborates with the National Park Service to monitor avian population trends in six national parks, including some of the jewels of the National Park system. This long-term monitoring program is designed to answer park management needs as well as understand avian population responses to climate change and other stressors.

The American Southwest is home to IBP’s newest regional science and conservation program, with initial efforts focusing on long-term bird population monitoring at Grand Canyon and several other national parks in the region; and a pilot study incorporating autonomous recording units to study bird populations on protected lands in remote areas of the Mojave Desert.

Native birds on small islands are particularly vulnerable to invasive species, anthropogenic habitat change, and other threats, and many species have been driven to extinction in historical times. To study the demographics and population pressures on Pacific birds, IBP and our regional partners have conducted demographic monitoring programs on the island of Saipan, and two islands in American Samoa. Another effort has focused on the discovery and conservation of a newly described seabird species - Bryan's Shearwater.