July/August 2010

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Mexico names marine Ramsar site on Gulf of California
The government of Mexico has designated its 114th Wetland of International Importance for the Ramsar List. “Canal del Infiernillo y esteros del territorio Comcaac (Xepe Coosot)” (29,700 hectares, 29°10'N 112°14'W) is a channel between Island Tiburón and the Sonora coast in northwestern Mexico, characterized by the presence of sea-grass beds, mangrove estuaries, seasonal creeks and small coral reef patches.

According to Ramsar’s Assistant Advisor for the Americas, Nadia Castro, based upon the accompanying data sheets, the sea-grass beds are the largest concentration of annual marine grasses in the eastern Pacific, and the mangroves are located at the northern limit of this vegetation type. These wetlands provide refuge, substrate and food to several species that are the basis for commercial and artisanal fisheries. In addition, the site is habitat of 81 endemic invertebrate species of Gulf of California and several threatened species, such as mangroves (Avicennia germinans, Laguncularia racemosa and Rhizophora mangle), totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), marine turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata, Caretta caretta, Dermochelys coriaceai, Lepidochelys olivacea and Chelonia mydas agassizi) and Brant Goose (Branta bernicla). For more than 2000 years the ethnic group Comcaac has inhabited this region and show an extensive ecological traditional knowledge, upon which they base their fisheries management practices.

In contrast to several other regions in the Gulf, the seabeds in the site have not been disturbed by the nets of shrimp vessels, but they are currently threatened by overfishing and tourist development.

Mexico presently has 114 Ramsar sites covering 8,191,057 hectares – the Convention’s global total is 1873 Ramsar sites covering 184,030,126 hectares.

Environmental leaders in Canada, the United States, and Mexico announce landbird conservation priorities
In May 2010 the governments of United States, Canada, and Mexico, on behalf of Partners in Flight organizations, announced the release of a ground-breaking report articulating tri-national priorities for bird conservation. The report, Saving our Shared Birds: Partners in Flight Tri-National Vision for Landbird Conservation, was unveiled at the XVth Trilateral Committee for Wildlife and Ecosystem Conservation and Management annual meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The report--a collaboration by bird conservation experts from the three nations’ leading conservation organizations--is the first comprehensive conservation assessment of bird species in North America. Release of this report also coincides with International Migratory Bird Day 2010, which celebrates the power of bird partnerships. It is available for download in English, Spanish, and French.

The United States, Canada, and Mexico share 882 native landbird species, almost one-third of which depend substantially for their survival on at least two of the countries each year. The report identifies 148 bird species in need of immediate conservation attention because of their highly threatened and declining populations and the threats they face.

“This Partners in Flight report will help us build on the great work currently being done by the many federal agencies, conservation groups, academic institutions and individuals who care about birds throughout the Western Hemisphere. Our many bird conservation initiatives such as Partners in Flight and the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act are already making a difference for birds,” said Rowan Gould, acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We are committed to increasing our cooperation with Mexico and Canada and working together to help save our shared birdlife.”

“The release of this report illustrates our three countries’ commitment to the long-term conservation of biological biodiversity and to working with each other to protect our natural heritage through forums like the Trilateral Committee for Wildlife and Ecosystem Conservation and Management, the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, and the International Year of Biodiversity,” said Virginia Poter, Canadian Wildlife Services’ Director General at Environment Canada. “The Government of Canada is proud to contribute to the conservation of our migratory birds and to collaborate with the United States and Mexico to protect our shared birdlife.”

“The winter ranges of shared migrants show a striking geographic overlap with the ranges of species at greatest risk of extinction,” said Dr. José Sarukhán Kermez, National Coordinator of Mexico’s National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO). “More than 100 of the migrants shared substantially among our three countries depend on the same tropical and pine-oak forests in Mexico that support highly threatened tropical resident.”

The report also includes the following key findings:

• The most imperiled birds include 44 species with very limited distributions, found mostly in Mexico, including the thick-billed parrot and horned guan.

• Also of high tri-national concern are 80 tropical residents with ranges in Mexico, which for some species extend as far as South America, such as the red-breasted chat and resplendent quetzal.

• In addition, 24 species that breed in the United States and Canada continue to warrant immediate action to prevent further declines, including the cerulean warbler, black swift, and Canada warbler.

• Forty-two common bird species have steeply declined by 50 percent or more in the past 40 years, including common nighthawk, eastern meadowlark and loggerhead shrike in the United States and Canada.

“Our continent’s spectacular birdlife extends from Canada’s boreal forests where billions of birds raise their young each year, to the stunning diversity of Mexico’s tropical forests, and the hemispheric migrations of birds that connect these distant lands,” said Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who serves as the Partners in Flight Science Committee Chair. “Conserving our continent’s birdlife will require greatly increased international cooperation, among our nations’ governments, as well as our societies.”

Learn more by visiting the Saving Our Shared Birds website.

Bridging the divide: Joint Ventures supporting international conservation in Mexico
(The following article was reprinted from the spring 2010 All-Bird Bulletin, a special issue dedicated to the release of the PIF Tri-National Vision for Landbird Conservation and PIF's 20th Anniversary. SJV Education and Outreach Coordinator Jennie Duberstein (who wrote the following article) was part of a guest editorial team that compiled and intially edited the included articles).

Neotropical migratory and resident bird populations throughout Mexico remain under-studied and poorly known, a fact that is highlighted in the new report, Saving Our Shared Birds: Partners in Flight Tri-National Vision for Landbird Conservation. Such a dearth of information about the status and distribution of birds in Mexico is due in large part to a lack of adequately trained on-site personnel to carry out needed monitoring and inventory work. Although Mexico has a number of federal natural protected areas (NPAs), they often lack staff capable of undertaking the design, implementation, data management, and analysis of bird monitoring efforts.

One goal of the Sonoran Joint Venture is to provide training and technical support to our partners. In March 2010, the SJV carried out two workshops Mazatlán, Sinaloa to train biologists, who conduct monitoring for the Mexican National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP), in designing and implementing basic bird monitoring programs and projects. The Talleres de Capacitación para el Monitoreo de Aves en Áreas Naturales Protegidas en México (Capacity Building Workshops for Bird Monitoring in Natural Protected Areas in Mexico) brought together diverse partners to design and implement two five-day courses, the first focused on aquatic birds, the second on landbirds. With funding from the U.S. Forest Service International Programs and National Park Service Office of International Affairs and Park Flight Migratory Bird Program, the SJV worked with partners to design a curriculum that combined classroom learning with field practice sessions. Partners included CONANP, NABCI-Mexico, the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mazatlán, CICESE, Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory, and Universidad Michoacana San Nicolas de Hidalgo.

Forty-five biologists attended the two workshops. Although most were from northwest Mexico, 27 different NPAs from all nine CONANP regions were represented. Biologists from the Marismas Nacionales Regional Alliance and two students from Durango, who are studying the Sierra Madre Sparrow, also attended. Regional alliances are the Mexican equivalent of U.S and Canada’s bird habitat joint ventures.

Over the course of the five-day workshops, participants learned about Mexico’s bird conservation priorities, regional, national, and international bird conservation plans, basic bird identification and field guide use, how to develop goals and objectives for monitoring programs, coordinated bird monitoring, different monitoring methodologies, sampling design and statistics, data management, and communicating results.

Some workshop participants were already bird biologists with significant experience in monitoring and research. For them this workshop presented an opportunity to coordinate with others doing similar work. They were also able to refine current monitoring efforts, get advice and input from the workshop’s expert instructors and, where possible, align efforts with other existing research to create a broader knowledge base for Mexican avifauna.

Other participants came with little to no experience with birds or bird monitoring. By the end of the workshop, these beginning birders had gained skills in bird identification and field guide use, were familiar with basic bird monitoring techniques, and were beginning to think about how to incorporate birds into the broad range of other flora and fauna monitoring going on in their NPA. All participants left the workshop with at least one goal and objective for bird monitoring in their area and clear plans for next steps.

These workshops were the first phase in what the SJV hopes will become a long-term effort for coordinated bird monitoring in Mexico. The JV is in the process of developing a website with protocols, methods, and other workshop materials to serve as a resource not only for workshop participants, but anyone with an interest in bird monitoring in Mexico.

The ultimate goal is to improve knowledge about the status and distribution of Neotropical migratory birds, as well as resident species, in priority areas in northwest Mexico and elsewhere in the country. Through the development of a coordinated effort and standardized protocols for bird monitoring, we hope to advance current knowledge of shared bird species and bridge the divide in conservation capacity that exists across the boundaries of Mexico and the United States and Canada.

For more information, contact Jennie Duberstein.

New online map shows network of protection for North America’s marine ecosystems
North America’s nearly 2,000 marine protected areas represent an unprecedented effort to protect the continent’s fragile marine environments and are found throughout the marine ecoregions that encircle our continent. Tshe latest map from the North American Environmental Atlas—coordinated by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC)—for the first time brings together information about all types of marine protected areas in Canada, Mexico and the United States, offering details about protection status and those responsible to manage the sites.
A functional network of marine protected areas is crucial for maintaining ecological integrity and protecting migratory species and transboundary habitats. They are also important to help ecosystems recover from or adapt to a wide variety of threats, including pollution from oil spills, overexploitation and rapidly changing environmental conditions.

Different levels of protection in North America’s marine ecoregions
In meeting the extraordinary challenge of protecting North America’s rich and fragile marine ecosystems, the map shows the important strides Canada, Mexico and the United States have made in establishing protected areas. However, challenges remain to ensure that adequate protection and management extends throughout all ecoregions. Although some ecoregions have limited number of protected areas the Alaskan/Fjordland Pacific ecoregion, for example, has protected areas covering almost 80 percent of the ecoregion. Likewise, the Northern Gulf of Mexico ecoregion has more than 250 protected areas.

The CEC has brought together tools and resources to help decision makers, industry, universities and other learning institutions, as well as concerned citizens, better understand North America’s shared ocean resources. These maps and publications include:

• A new map viewer using Google Earth to explore all of the Atlas’ marine ecosystems maps and data.
  
• Marine Ecoregions of North America: a set of maps and detailed descriptions that provide a platform for sound management and conservation of marine biodiversity.
  Baja California to the Bering Sea: an assessment of 28 priority conservation areas requiring concerted conservation action along North America’s West Coast.
  
• Conservation action plans for four marine species of common concern for North America: vaquita porpoise, humpback whale, leatherback turtle and pink-footed shearwater.

To explore the CEC’s marine information and view an introductory video, please visit: http://www.cec.org/marine.

Marismas Nacionales declared Biosphere Reserve
On 12 May 2010 the President of Mexico decreed the creation of the Marismas Nacionales Biosphere Reserve in Nayarit, Mexico, on the southern end of the Sonoran Joint Venture boundary in Mexico. Marismas Nacionales is located in the north-western Pacific coast of Mexico and contains a large complex of brine coastal lagoons, mangroves, muddy bogs or swamps, and ravines. The area spans the south coast of Sinaloa and the north coast of Nayarit and connects to the Pacific Ocean through the Bocas de Tecapán, Cuautla, El Colorado and the Santiagoand San Pedro River deltas.

This region comprises 279,000 acres (113, 000 hectares) of mangroves and estuaries (15-20% of the country’s total mangrove forests and the most extent of its type in the pacific coast), small patches of timber-yielding tropical forest (cedars, oaks, amapas, among others), non timber-yielding forest (oil palm, coconut palm, and white, red, black and Chinese mangrove) and pastures.

The area hosts 14 species of native flora that are either endemic, threatened, and/or at risk for extinction. Additionally, it also hosts 99 endemic fauna species (including mammals, birds, reptile, and amphibians), and 73 species threatened or endangered of extinction. Biologists have documented 202 bird species in the new reserve, which has been designated by WHSRN as a site of International Importance due to large populations of American Avocet, as well as Wilson’s Plover, Snowy Plover, and American Oystercatcher. In addition, sea turtles, jaguar, ocelot, and crocodile, as well as many other species, are found in the area.  

The ultimate goal is to seek collaboration between federal government agencies, municipal governments, ejido government, and communities of the region. With the new protected area designation, CONANP, who will manage the Biosphere Reserve, hopes support conservation in the region through regulation, reorientation, and cessation of harmful activities, combined with collaboration for sustainable use of natural resources.

Upcoming grant deadlines
We have recently added information about a number of new funding opportunities for those doing work in the SJV region. Please take the time to browse through the complete list of funding opportunities.

• North American Wetlands Conservation Act Program
  Deadline: 30 July 2010 (U.S. Standard Grants); 28 October 2010 (U.S. Small Grants); 2 June 2010 (Mexican Standard Grants)
  Description: The North American Wetlands Conservation Act provides matching grants to private or public organizations or to individuals who have developed partnerships to carry out wetlands conservation projects in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The program provides US, Mexican, and Canadian Standard Grants (between $50,000 and $1,000,000) and US Small Grants (up to $75,000). For more details on how to apply, visit the NAWCA section of the SJV website. Important note: Anyone considering applying for a U.S. grant should coordinate their application with SJV Science Coordinator Carol Beardmore (602-242-0524 ext. 248). The SJV will need to be involved not only to provide guidance but also because we rank all applications that are submitted (Mexican applicants do not need to coordinate with the SJV, although we are happy to provide assistance).
• The Christensen Fund
  Deadline:31 August 2010; 31 March 2011
  Description: The Christensen Fund makes grants to organizations that work towards maintaining the rich diversity of the world—biological and cultural—over the long run, including the persistence and adaptation of indigenous systems for managing landscapes that sustain cultural and biological value and diversity.
• Wildlife Without Borders
  Deadline: 1 October 2010 (proposals must be submitted to both the USFWS and SEMARNAT)
  Description: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Wildlife Without Borders-Mexico Program is currently soliciting proposals for projects that address the conservation and sustainable use of Mexico's wildlife and plant resources. Of particular interest are projects that strengthen Mexico's capability to conserve and use sustainably its biological resources, contribute to the integration of environmental concerns with sustained development processes, and results in specific and measurable on-the-ground management actions. VIsit the Wildlife Without Borders-Mexico Program grant application website for the official Request for Proposals and Assistance Awards Guidelines.

Upcoming meetings and workshops
See complete details about these and other upcoming meetings and workshops.

• WESTERN FIELD ORNITHOLOGISTS ANNUAL CONFERENCE: 13-17 October 2010.
• BIRD CONSERVATION MEETING IN THE NORTHEAST: THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIPS: 19-21 October 2010, Plymouth, MA.
• CLIMATE CHANGE AND BIRDS: A WEST COAST PERSPECTIVE. 19-20 October 2010, Ashland, Oregon. Contact: Jaime Stephens or Aaron Holmes.