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Fwd: CBC and Audubon Mission



Carolina Birders,

Thanks to Ann Shahid for a very compelling response to the emails 
that have been floating around questioning the importance of 
Christmas Bird Counts and Audubon's mission. I was going to send out 
something like her message and now only have to say "right on" or 
"ditto" (that should cover the political spectrum). Trust what Ann 
said--the CBCs are really important scientific endeavors and are put 
to very good and frequent use. So keep participating, and be as 
rigorous as you can about the details of what you see and the details 
of your time in the field. Ornithology has profited from skilled and 
dedicated amateurs more than any other field in biology. Check out 
Cornell's Laboratory for Ornithology and National Audubon's 
Birdsource/Citizen Science website for plenty of details.

Likewise, Ann's points on what Audubon is doing nationwide are worth 
paying attention to. As a board member of Audubon North Carolina, I 
can assure you that we have a very, very talented and dedicated staff 
in our state office working on environmental education and protecting 
habitat for birds and other wildlife. Walker Golder's work on the 
coastal island sanctuaries and the Important Bird Areas project has 
won him well-deserved national acclaim. Chris Canfield, our Executive 
Director, and Education Director Andy Wood are investigating some 
exciting possibilities for establishing Audubon Centers at strategic 
locations in the state.

If you're a CBC member and not a member of Audubon, it's time to get 
with the program! There is no organization in NC that comes close to 
accomplishing what Audubon North Carolina is doing for the 
conservation of birds in this state. If you really care about birds, 
there's no excuse not to be an Audubon member.

Please contact me or your nearest chapter for details.

Thanks, and good birding,

Rob Bierregaard
Biology Dept./UNC-Charlotte


>Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 20:19:15 -0400
>From: Shahid <shahidrad@comcast.net>
>Subject: CBC and Audubon Mission
>To: carolinabirds <carolinabirds@duke.edu>
>X-Priority: 3
>X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-milter, Duke University (http://amavis.org/)
>Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
>
>Dear Carolinabirders,
>As I've been reading the many comments about Audubon losing its mission and
>the comments about the CBCs and the recent issue, I decided to contact the
>national CBC office to get clarification on some issues.  I'll share them
>with you:
>" Checking out the CBC home page would be helpful.  When
>reading the 102nd CBC issue you will find two peer-reviewed scientific
>articles (Kelly McKay's raptor work was presented at the North American
>Ornithological Conference in St. Louis in 1998, and there was an entire
>symposium on the use of CBC data in scientific research...).  Also, John
>Sauer's piece in the 102nd CBC issue was specifically written to address the
>need of helping researchers with pointers on the best ways of using CBC data
>in meaningful statistical analyses.
>
>In addition, there is now (and has been since last year) a CBC Bibliography
>on the website, which lists many, many published papers that are based on
>analyses of CBC data.  In fact, that Biblio needs to be updated--it's only
>current through about 1996, and the 'industry' of mining the CBC for
>conservation and ornithological research has accelerated since then.
>
>As far as reducing a CBC to becoming an 'unofficial' count that isn't sent
>to Audubon (and by the way, Chapters ARE Audubon...), if that happens the
>data are not included in the cumulative database, and are lost for any value
>to research.  The efforts of the census participants become relegated to
>just a nice day of social birding, instead of having a nice day of social
>birding that actually helps the birds.  As far as the five bucks, I would
>hope that most observers think their time for a day's effort is worth at
>least five bucks 'insurance' to make sure that their efforts
>really do mean something."
>
>As for Audubon's mission--  Under the leadership of Peter Berle, the mission
>did veer far away from birds and became so watered down that Audubon seemed
>to be losing its identity.  Under John Flicker's leadership the mission is
>centered around education and protecting habitat for birds and other
>wildlife.  Audubon feels the awesome responsibility of educating the general
>public about our fragile environment by teaching people in nature, exposing
>them to positive experiences and moving them along the continuum to being
>conservationists.  The IBA(Important Bird Area) program is one of the
>driving forces in Audubon today.  For those interested, you may want to
>check it out at Audubon's home page.  Many states (not SC or NC) have
>full-time bird conservation co-ordinators.  SC is working on finding funding
>for one in the near future.
>
>Audubon's website is www.audubon.org
>
>Ann Shahid, Education Director
>Audubon Center and Sanctuary at Francis Beidler Forest
>Harleyville, SC

-- 

Rob Bierregaard

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				Phones: 704 333 2405
Biology Department			704 547 3499
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9201 University City Blvd.		704 547 3128
Charlotte NC 28223-0001		rbierreg@email.uncc.edu

	http://www.bioweb.uncc.edu/bierregaard/
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