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Discover Pennsylvania’s Important Bird Areas

April 18, 2008
Discover Pennsylvania’s Important Bird Areas

Great Marsh, Chester County

Audubon Pennsylvania’s Important Bird Areas (IBA) program highlights sites of “special significance to breeding or non-breeding birds, which on some basis, can be distinguished from surrounding areas.”  Pennsylvania is proud to be the first state in the United States to initiate an IBA program.  The goals of the IBA program are to identify a network of sites throughout the state that are essential for sustaining wild bird populations, and to protect or manage these sites for long-term conservation purposes.  IBAs have been selected for a variety of reasons that are categorized as critical to the conservation of the state’s bird communities and populations. 

 

 

Pennsylvania’s IBAs include a great diversity of locations to protect our great diversity of birds.  They range from city parks that are important migrant stopover habitat or contain a critical heron colony to large wetlands or forest blocks that support populations of many birds that need that habitat.  These IBAs also vary greatly in ownership and size.  Recent studies have suggested that Pennsylvania’s wetland birds are declining even faster than realized previously.  Due to its extensive forest cover, Pennsylvania is critical to the conservation of several woodland songbirds such as Wood Thrush and Scarlet Tanager. Volunteers at Pine Creek Gorge IBA

Visit the IBA website, including its conservation plans, maps, and, even more important, visit the sites and watch birds there.  Your eBird data collected at these sites will help everyone better understand how they support critical wildlife resources and will contribute to our ability to protect and manage these sites for future generations.  It also will help us monitor changes in bird populations at each site. Young Northern Saw-whet Owl in Southern Sproul State Forest IBA

 

There currently are 85 designated IBAs in the state.  Many eBird hotspots are either a part of or an entire IBA.   To help facilitate community involvement, Audubon Pennsylvania initiated the IBA Stewardship Adoption Program in 2001. This program encourages and enables individuals, organizations or institutions to “adopt” a specific IBA and partner directly with us to monitor and protect that site. Setting Up Point Counts at the Piney Tract, Clarion County

 

 

Get involved by contacting Audubon Pennsylvania.

PA IBA website: http://pa.audubon.org/iba/

 “The Muck” Marsh Creek Wetlands in State Game Lands 313

 Images provided by Kim Van Fleet of Audubon Pennsylvania