As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Wednesday 10 October 2018

Crowd-sourced data wins protection for endangered tricolored blackbird

In 2015 the species was again under consideration for protection under the California Endangered Species Act. This time, however, partners at California Audubon were armed with new information, thanks largely to the work of Dr. Orin Robinson—a Cornell Lab of Ornithology Postdoctoral Fellow in Conservation Science who has been studying Tricolored Blackbirds for the past two years.

Robinson's work combined data in eBird, a citizen-science project logging millions of bird sightings, with survey data from partners at UC Davis to develop new trend estimates for the state's Tricolored Blackbird population. By combining these data sets, Robinson developed a statistically reliable population model showing Tricolored Blackbirds declined more than 33 percent during just the past 10 years.


More information: Orin J. Robinson et al, Using citizen science data in integrated population models to inform conservation, Biological Conservation (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2018.10.002

Journal reference: Biological Conservation

Provided by: Cornell University

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