The eBird Project uses birder sightings, satellite images to map migrations so that temporary, safe resting spots can be created.
By Anders Gyllenhaal April 27 at 9:00 AM For years, as California’s Central Valley grew into the nation’s leading agricultural corridor, the region gradually lost almost all of the wetlands that birds, from the tiny sandpiper to the great blue heron, depend on during their migrations along the West Coast.
At a time when 40 percent of the Earth’s 10,000 bird species are in decline, according to the State of the World’s Birds 2018 report, the still-developing eBird Project helps to remake traditional conservation. More than 400,000 birders have sent in 34 million lists of species in the United States and dozens of other countries in recent years. That makes this the largest citizen-science effort to date. Birders have reported seeing almost every species on Earth.
It’s possible to watch the huge sandhill crane work its way from Alaska and Canada across the West and Midwest to Texas and Florida. The path of the ruby-throated hummingbird, weighing about 11 ounces, is shown shifting in a cloud of pixels from Canada down through the eastern United States to Central America. Another animated map shows the yellow warbler moving from the far north to Central America, passing through every state on its massive migration.
How a good idea happened Cornell’s Iliff and four other researchers were driving across North Dakota in fall 2009 when an email popped up with the prototype for a new animated map. They pulled off the road and gathered around a cellphone to watch an illustration of an Eastern phoebe’s migration travels over the course of a year.The eBird citizen-science concept emerged over 20 years of trial and error during the rise of social media and the spread of smartphones.
Once the app became a two-way street, birdsighting contributions accelerated. Cornell gradually trained birders to keep track of how long they are out, how far they go and what they don’t see as well as what they do. 'Heartening' development Mark Reynolds, a scientist with the Nature Conservancy, spent years buying land for wildlife sanctuaries in California. “But even after many, many years of that, it was really just addressing a fraction of the need,’’ he said. A century ago, the area had about 4 million acres of wetland; only about 200,000 acres remain today, according to research from a regional conservation plan.
Reynolds said he will always remember the call he got that first year from a biologist reporting on a flooded field filled with 5,000 small wading birds called dunlin.Giving hope wings The Cornell Lab, funded by contributions and foundations, has big plans. The lab has created maps so far for 107 species, from easy-to-spot birds such as pelicans, herons, eagles, vultures, robins, blackbirds and swallows to the more elusive warblers, buntings and kinglets.
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