October 3, 2002 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The same doppler-radar technology that meteorologists use to forecast the weather is helping the Nature Conservancy, in Arlington, Va., identify where songbirds rest during their migratory flights, thus indicating where the group should focus its conservation efforts to preserve the birds’ habitat. Songbird populations have been declining for the past 30 years, largely because of habitat loss.
To avoid predators, migrating songbirds fly at night, which makes them hard to track. But, the weather-surveillance radar picks up the birds in the evening when they emerge from the stopover habitat and fly into the sky. By mapping the location from which the birds depart, scientists can identify where the birds rested during the day.
Sarah E. Mabey is a behavioral ecologist doing research at North Carolina State University on a conservation-science fellowship from the Nature Conservancy. Her project uses weather-surveillance radar to document the relative abundance of migrating songbirds at stopover sites in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and the consistency with which the birds use those sites as they travel in the spring and fall. She also compiles information about land use and threats to the sites, such as encroaching development.
The Nature Conservancy will use that information to decide which sites are most important to preserve. The organization is working with scientists on similar projects in the Gulf Coast and Great Lakes regions.
Ms. Mabey believes that results of her project and others like it will force environmentalists to rethink their traditional approach to conservation, and to form new partnerships with local land-use planners and private landowners to preserve stopover habitats for migratory birds.
“Migration is such a dynamic phenomenon in terms of both space and time,” says Ms. Mabey. “It’s quite challenging from a conservation perspective to think of how we can protect organisms that are on the move.”
For more information: Go to http://nature.org/aboutus/projects/wings.
