Tuesday, October 19: The Power of Partnerships & Emerging Bird Conservation Issues  John Hagan, Manomet Center for Conservation Science John Hagan will kick-off the conference with a perspective on what the major bird conservation issues were that people were thinking about 20+ years ago when John helped organize the seminal conference at Woods Hole on the ecology and conservation of Neotropical migrants. He will also address what the bird conservation community was hoping to achieve as it embarked on efforts to address those major issues. John's talk will set the stage for reflecting on the bird conservation successes of the past 20 years and for looking forward at some of the major issues we need to address in the future, which will be covered in the plenary talks following his introductory remarks.  Terry Rich, Partners in Flight/US Fish and Wildlife Service The roots of bird conservation can be traced back decades and even centuries, depending on your viewpoint. I examine the successes we’ve had over the period 1990-2010 – the lifetime of Partners in Flight – with a deep appreciation for the foundation that earlier conservationists have built. With the steady increase in human population and a seemingly endless array of new threats to birds, we often feel fortunate just to break even. New tools, especially those that allow us to communicate more broadly and more quickly and those that enable more detailed research on bird movements, have given bird conservationists and birds a chance. Although together we have acquired, protected and restored millions of acres in the Western Hemisphere for all kinds of bird species, it is perhaps the changes in the culture of conservation and in the culture of our societies where the biggest achievements have been made over the last twenty years.  Bob Askins, Connecticut College This presentation will begin with a brief overview of the resiliency of deciduous forests ecosystems (and, by implication, forest birds) during the Pleistocene. Bob Askins will then discuss what we can expect in terms of ecological resiliency in the face of sustainable logging, habitat fragmentation and climate change in the future, and how we can ensure that a full set of forest bird species (including early successional species) is sustained across the region. The presentation will include examples of current conservation partnerships that are attempting to address these issues at a broad scale. Wednesday, October 20: Advancing Techniques & Approaches to Bird Conservation Activities  Pete Marra, Smithsonian Institution’s Conservation Biology Institute For migratory animals, especially birds, the periods of the annual cycle are inextricably linked. For example, the consequences of events on migrant birds on winter locations affect individual performance during migration and the subsequent breeding season, and vice versa. This simple fact has important implications for the ecology, evolution, and especially the conservation of migratory birds. Such inter-seasonal effects are poorly understood within most bird migration systems - primarily for two reasons. First, we have a poor understanding of how individuals and populations are connected between specific breeding and non-breeding locations. Second, the majority of research is still conducted during the breeding season, leaving us with an inadequate understanding of fundamental natural history and ecology of migrant birds during the non-breeding season. Yet, most animals spend most of the year on their non-breeding grounds.  Ashley Dayer, Cornell Lab of Ornithology & Cornell University Human Dimensions Research Unit As our knowledge of bird conservation threats and challenges grows, we can no longer deny that the success of our conservation efforts relies on human action. In order to affect these actions, our bird conservation community must come together to design, support, and conduct strategic education, outreach, and communications in the most effective means to address our most pressing issues. Our communications strategies--strong as they might be-- will increasingly struggle to be heard, seen, or considered in a rapidly changing society, dominated by pithy messages, flashy images, and powerful technology. Ashley will explore the internet-based social science research, communications, and social media tools we now have at our fingertips to face these challenges. She will also consider how we might use these resources to harness the human connection with birds--reaching beyond birders to new and essential audiences. Not only are these tools available to reach out to bring others into the fold of bird conservation, but they have the potential to build the strength and impact of our own bird conservation networks in the Northeast. Thursday, October 21: Climate Change and Other Major Challenges  Andrew Milliken, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service This presentation will provide background information on the development, purpose, and structure of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC), which are partnerships that use a collaborative, science-based approach to conservation focused on providing landscapes capable of sustaining fish and wildlife populations and addressing major threats including climate change. The North Atlantic LCC covers the Atlantic coast from Virginia to the Canadian Maritimes as well as all of New England and north to the St. Lawrence River. This talk will review the basic principles behind and current directions for this conservation science partnership focused on developing collaborative science to guide conservation to address major threats. It will discuss some of the avenues by which LCCs and the bird conservation community can work most closely together to inform and support each others' efforts. LCCs are currently in the process of identifying major threats and associated issues for which additional science is needed and would like to incorporate the science needs that have been already been identified by the bird conservation initiatives. This talk will also provide suggestions for mechanisms by which bird conservation initiatives can be regularly involved in LCC activities. There will be a roundtable discussion during the morning session following this plenary talk for interactive discussions about LCCs and bird conservation.  Hector Galbraith, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences Hector Galbraith's presentation will begin by outlining how much we expect the climate to change in the Northeast over the rest of this century. It will then focus on how the projected changes could impact bird populations and communities, and then ask the question – "are we already seeing such impacts in the Northeast?" It will conclude with a discussion about how we currently monitor and conserve birds and how we may need to change to respond to a warming climate. |