Reaching across borders to benefit birdlife

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-- Curtis Smalling, Important Bird Areas Coordinator & Mountain Program Manager

“We’re saving this one for you!” exclaimed Mariamar Gutierrez as she and a handful of students returned to a banding station at Finca Esperanza Verde, a shade-grown coffee plantation high in the Nicaraguan mountains. And sure enough, when I retrieved the small bundle from the bottom of the cloth bag, it was a beautiful Golden-winged Warbler, my focal bird of the moment. Luckily, the bird was in great condition, as he was about to make his arduous return migration to the United States. I marveled at the fact that I could conceivably catch and band this particular bird this spring, when he was on his breeding grounds in western North Carolina.

Audubon North Carolina’s (ANC) involvement in Nicaraguan conservation and sustainability projects grew out of the need to address the challenges that neotropical migratory birds face on both their breeding and wintering grounds. Two of North Carolina’s highest priority bird species are greatly impacted by activities on their wintering grounds in Nicaragua: the Golden-winged and Cerulean warblers, both Federal Species of Special Concern and Audubon Red Watchlist species. In addition to answering basic ecological questions about these species, we also want to assist Nicaraguan conservationists and ornithologists in their bird conservation work through training, hiring local researchers, using local guide services, and supporting the ecotourism infrastructure. And we hope to link Audubon’s Important Bird Area (IBA) Program with IBAs in Nicaragua.

I first traveled to Nicaragua in 2007, when I accompanied Dave Davenport of EcoQuest Travel and John Connors with the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences for a week of birding and bird-banding in different habitats, mostly in the central highlands of Matagalpa province. Students from Guilford College and N.C. State University also attend these regularly scheduled banding trips on alternate years. During my second trip in March 2008, I traveled with a group of students from the Putney School in Vermont and their teachers, Mick and Cathy Abbott.

The network of partners working on this cross-border project continues to expand. I first met Nicaraguan ornithologists Mariamar Gutierrez and Salvadora Morales in Siren, Wisconsin, at the first International Golden-winged Warbler Working Group meeting and they have played a vital role in the project. Mariamar, a licensed birder, has acted as a local expert with those groups and the Putney school. Both of them have been instrumental in designating the first round of IBAs in Nicaragua.

We are also grateful for the generous support of private donors such as Phil Manning, who generously donated funds to purchase leg gauges (used to size birds’ legs for banding) for the MoSI project in Central and South America. This effort, much like the United States equivalent MAPS Program (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship), seeks to monitor survivorship of migrant birds on their wintering grounds. Phil also donated a pair of new binoculars for researchers in Nicaragua. ANC, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, and Dr. Lynn Moseley donated banding nets for these efforts as well.

Audubon North Carolina board member Juanita Roushdy funded our efforts to support the fieldwork for a team of surveyors to monitor Cerulean Warbler migration in Nicaragua. Coordinated by the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, this project seeks to locate primary migratory stopover habitats for Cerulean Warblers in Central America. Nicaraguan researcher Sandra Hernandez, along with several assistants, conducted surveys in Nicaragua’s largest forested area, the Bosowas Preserve. The team found five Cerulean Warblers on their first day in the field, but they had to suspend their fieldwork in that area when they were escorted out by Nicaraguan Army forces who were searching for timber poachers. Our own Chris Canfield conducted surveys at the Finca Esperanza Verde in 2008 and the research continues in 2009.

Recently, the SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Conservation Fund awarded ANC a grant to provide training to support MoSI efforts and begin research on Golden-winged Warbler distribution and habitat usage in Nicaragua. Part of that grant funded training for more banders for MoSI, including ornithologists from other Central American countries, as well as Nicaragua.

We are also assisting the IBA program in Nicaragua. A stakeholder meeting in Nicaragua kicked off planning for on-the-ground conservation at some of the 31 IBAs recently identified in the country. Nicaraguan partners will oversee these efforts and ANC staff will assist in planning, funding, and prioritizing work in these IBAs as technical advisors. We hope that our partnership will enable local conservationists to carry out the work that will help sustain these highest priority breeding species.

Future plans include linking ANC chapters with specific IBAs and MoSI stations in Nicaragua, helping establish guide certification training for native Nicaraguans, and continuing to support ongoing conservation projects at the Finca Esperanza Verde.

And I hope North Carolina birders will keep an eye out for Golden-winged Warblers this spring and summer. Who knows, one of them could be “my” bird from the Finca!