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What is the U.S. NABCI Committee?

A Coaltion for Integrated Bird Conservation

Started in 1999, the U.S. North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI) Committee is a coalition of government agencies, private organizations, and bird initiatives in the United States working to ensure the long-term health of North America's native bird populations. The Committee is dedicated to advancing integrated bird conservation, based on sound science and cost-effective management, to benefit all birds in all habitats.

Through the work of the Committee and its subcommittees, U.S. NABCI participants are increasing the effectiveness of conservation initiatives and programs by enhancing coordination on specific topics such as monitoring, private lands, policy and legislative issues, international collaboration, conservation design, and federal and state agency support for bird conservation.

Vision: We envision populations and habitats of North America's birds that are protected, restored, and enhanced through coordinated efforts at international, national, regional, state, and local levels, guided by sound science and effective management.

Goal: We aim to deliver the full spectrum of bird conservation through regionally based, biologically driven, landscape-oriented partnerships.

The U.S. NABCI Committee and subcommittees provide forums for:

  • Initiating and broadening partnerships for bird conservation across the continent;
  • Increasing funding for conserving birds in the United States and wherever else they may occur during their life cycles;
  • Making partnerships and resources more effective and efficient by fostering integrated bird conservation;
  • Building on existing structures for delivering bird conservation, such as joint ventures, and stimulating new joint venture-like structures and mechanisms as appropriate;
  • Developing a common biological framework for conservation planning, design, and delivery;
  • Working together through the challenges presented by conserving birds on a landscape scale; and
  • Fostering greater cooperation among the nations and peoples of the continent

Integrated Bird Conservation is about:

Conserving Birds Across Geopolitical Boundaries

Most birds travel great distances across our politically delineated landscapes – flying hundreds, in some cases thousands of miles during annual migrations. On-the-ground management is often linked to bird population response at the regional or continental scale. Bird conservation, therefore, requires broad geographical perspectives – perspectives that are regional, national, continental, hemispheric, even global in scale. Coordinating and supporting conservation activities across these geopolitical boundaries will insure that birds are protected throughout the geographic ranges of their annual life cycles.

Conserving Birds Across Taxonomic Groups

Birds of different taxonomic groups, such as waterfowl, raptors, shorebirds, and songbirds, often share the same habitats or use adjoining habitats within the landscape. By using a common spatial language and ecological framework to identify priority habitats and sites shared among birds of different taxonomic groups, conservation actions can be directed comprehensively to all priority birds within a landscape. Finding such 'common ground' is key to conserving North America's precious bird diversity.

Conserving Birds Across Landscapes

Both humans and wildlife depend upon the bounty of the earth's natural landscapes for sustenance and survival. Sustainable landscape-level conservation thus requires that the biological needs of birds, and a host of other wildlife, be successfully incorporated into land-use policies, programs, and management practices affecting broad landscapes at regional scales. Since bird populations respond throughout their ranges to variations in landscape-level conditions, bird conservation must be delivered in the context of achieving a pre-established design of landscape sustainability.