El Grupo Cerúleo to Receive Conservation Award

Congratulations to all members of El Grupo Cerúleo, an international group of scientists dedicated to the study and conservation of Cerulean Warblers. The Chief of the U. S. Forest Service at the Office of International Programs has awarded the group the Wings across the Americas International Partnership Award for 2008. The award is given in recognition of the group's efforts to develop the assessment of the nonbreeding range of the Cerulean Warbler in South America. Priority Migrant eBird contributed significantly to this effort. Read on to learn more about this collaboration and Priority Migrant eBird.

The award ceremony will be held on March 27, 2008 in conjunction with the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Phoenix, AZ (Hyatt Regency Hotel) from 6 - 8 pm in Regency A&B. Full conference information including schedule, sessions, workshops and much more is available by visiting www.wildlifemanagementinstitute.org.

The goal of Priority Migrant eBird is to collect the non-breeding season distribution information needed to generate effective rangewide conservation strategies for long-distance migratory species that have experienced precipitous population declines over the last few decades.

The project was initially conceived by the international committees of the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group (Alianza Alas Doradas) and the Cerulean Warbler Technical Group (El Grupo Cerúleo) as a tool for addressing the lack of information on non-breeding season distributions for these two species in Central and northern South America. In order to maximize the number of contributors among the banding, conservation, research, education, and birding communities, and to minimize the effort needed to contribute records, these groups decided to use the power of eBird to facilitate data entry and to produce exciting output products that will be able to track the dynamic distributions of high priority species.

Priority Migrant eBird is asking contributors to submit records for the following target species:

• Cerulean Warbler (Dendroica cerulea)

• Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera)

• Blue-winged Warbler (Vermivora pinus)

• Canada Warbler (Wilsonia canadensis)

• Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi)

While the focus is on current records (Spring 2006), contributors are encouraged to enter historical records from previous years as well. Priority Migrant eBird is completely integrated with eBird, so if you have entered your observations of these species in eBird, you have contributed to this project! If you would like to find out more or contribute, visit Priority Migrant eBird.