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September 12, 2011
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Time
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7:30 PM |
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Place
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Immanuel
Lutheran Church - 867 North Pleasant St, Amherst, MA (just
north of the UMass campus and
Marks Meadow School) |
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Directions to meetings |
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John Cecil |
The Important Bird Areas Program in the United States |
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| Across the U.S., over 2,500 sites, encompassing more than 370 million acres, have been identified as Important Bird Areas, areas which are vital to conserving birds and other biodiversity. The Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program starts with this foundation of site identification and prioritization for conservation action, and follows with community engagement in the development and implementation of conservation plans and actions. The program engages individuals, private landowners, local communities, and government agencies, and the result is an IBA network with a community of supporters working to monitor, restore, conserve and watch over these important habitats for birds and other wildlife. Staff and volunteers constitute a team of IBA citizen scientists, studying species populations, assessing breeding success, evaluating threats to bird populations, and keeping ever-watchful eyes on the places birds depend on. These places can be National Wildlife Refuges, National Parks and other public, protected lands, but they can also be working farms, ranches, reserves, local parks, and other private lands. They can be in or around urban areas or they can be in remote areas. The IBA Program continues to be successful because it identifies priority sites for birds in a global context. It includes all birds and all bird habitats, and it promotes constituency building focused on stewardship and conservation delivery.
The IBA Program is coordinated nationally by Audubon but is highly dependent upon local implementation by staff and partners across the United States. This combined approach to program implementation maximizes the effectiveness of IBA conservation. State-based IBA programs help to assure that the process is grassroots-driven, with engagement of the local communities and partners that are dedicated to caring about the birds and the places on which they depend. At the same time, these local efforts are framed in the context of national and international conservation planning efforts. |
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Biography
John Cecil is Director of the Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program for the National Audubon Society, where his responsibilities include working with Audubon staff and partners to identify and conserve the most important places for birds throughout the U.S. In addition John is the current Chair of the U.S. Shorebird Council and is Audubon’s representative on the U.S. National Ramsar Committee. Before Joining Audubon in 2001, he worked for several state wildlife agencies including two years with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission's Non-game Wildlife Program. John received an M.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a B.S. in Wildlife Management from Frostburg State University in western Maryland. Through his professional and academic experiences John has been involved in conservation activities benefiting a wide variety of wildlife including: freshwater mussels, American Alligators, Bog Turtles, Southern Appalachian and Allegheny Woodrats, Northern Flying Squirrels, Wood Ducks, Mottled Ducks, Peregrine Falcons, songbirds, Piping Plovers, Wilson's Plovers, and numerous colonial waterbirds. John’s conservation and birding interests have lead him to travel extensively throughout the U.S. and the Americas.
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