Audubon North Carolina’s Golden-winged Warbler Research was conducted mainly in the Amphibolite Mountains in Watauga and Ashe counties (February's IBA of the Month). The ultimate goal of this four year research project was to look at demographic information and habitat usage in order to create management guidelines that could be made available to land managers and owners.  The Golden-winged Warbler Working Group (of which Audubon NC is a part) has produced a draft of a species conservation plan including a species status assessment, best management practices for creating and maintaining habitat, monitoring the species and issues related to its wintering grounds conservation.  The first piece of that body of work has been released now as a set of forest best management practices and is available here.  More regional and habitat specific documents will be forthcoming in the next month or two and we will post those here as well.

And landowners interested in working to protect Golden-winged Warblers and early successional habitats in the Amphibolites IBA can contact Curtis for help in deciding if managing for shrubland on your land is something you are interested in pursuing.  Through his Together Green Fellowship, Curtis is reaching out to landowners to help them manage their land for birds and other wildlife.  He is also working with public land managers as well to create and maintain early successional habitats.  For an introduction to early successional habitats and what that means, see our video on the subject on our YouTube channel.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Field Sparrows are also common in old field habitats. Photo by Steven Bulloc"]