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IBAs and You

© Carl Cook

Important Bird Areas (IBAs) do not come with any regulatory protection. Instead, Audubon seeks to build grassroots partnerships around these sites to encourage informed stewardship and the long-term maintenance of the values that initially led to the area’s recognition. IBAs provide Audubon with sites to focus our conservation, education, and policy work.

Activities at IBAs include field trips, monitoring efforts, and habitat restoration efforts. Volunteer citizen-science monitoring projects help to track bird populations and site condition, and to identify needed management. Information from this effort assists grassroots stewardship, policy initiatives, and education and outreach. Excellent examples of conservation work on IBAs in Washington include Pilchuck Audubon’s efforts at Port Susan Bay IBA, and Grays Harbor Audubon’s acquisition of property at the Humptulips Estuary IBA.

You can help identify, monitor, and conserve Important Bird Areas. Here’s a list (by no means exhaustive!) of opportunities:

—Organize a birding field trip to IBAs in your area.

—If you visit or participate in a field trip on an IBA, keep track of the species and number of individual birds you see and hear, and report your results to the state IBA coordinator or to the eBird online database.

—Organize a bird survey at an IBA or potential IBA.

© Jeff Larsen

—Adopt an IBA and help to develop a conservation plan for the site in partnership with Audubon Washington and local partners.

—Advocate for funding for an IBA where land acquisition is underway.

—Recruit and organize volunteers to help an IBA managed by a refuge, state park, or land trust.

—Advocate for laws and policies that will benefit birds of concern at IBAs.

—Write articles and letters about IBAs in newsletters, magazines, newspapers, and other outlets to help educate citizens about these sites.

Join Audubon today to help the successful IBA program continue!