Improving the breeding bird survey
This article is part of a larger document. View the larger document here.Abstract
We investigated increasing the number of Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) routes and reducing potential bias as ways to increase the number of species adequately monitored by the BBS in the Pacific Northwest. Estimates of place-to-place variance in trends were used to assess the effects of increasing the number of additional BBS routes. Increasing the number of BBS routes from the current number (149) to 210 would increase the number of adequately covered species, using a recently proposed standard, from 42 at present to 60. If potential bias was reduced from its estimated current value (0.008) to 0.003, then the number of adequately monitored species at present would be 75 and would increase to 84 with 210 BBS routes. Implementing effective waterbird, raptor and nocturnal species surveys would cover up to 45 more species resulting in adequate coverage for 121 (74 percent) of the 164 species that warrant monitoring. We recommend that all three approaches–increasing the number of BBS routes, reducing potential bias, and implementing new surveys–be considered in efforts to improve bird monitoring programs.