Birds & Birding
Mass Audubon and The State of the Birds Report

In March 2009 the U.S. Department of the Interior (USDOI) released The State of the Birds, a comprehensive synthesis of the conservation status, threats, and recovery objectives for every major North American bird group. 

The State of the Birds and the Mass Audubon connection:
Mass Audubon’s strategy of integrating land conservation, research, education, and advocacy enable us to address the conservation needs of many bird species and habitat priorities identified in The State of the Birds. 

• The Important Bird Area (IBA) Program has used internationally recognized, scientifically grounded criteria to prioritize 79 sites at the landscape level that collectively capture the majority of significant avian habitats in the Commonwealth.  
• The Coastal Waterbird Program stewardship and monitoring efforts at nesting and staging sites for the Piping Plover and Roseate Tern are activities of global conservation importance. 
• Our Grassland Bird Program has defined priorities and management programs for the protection of declining populations of grassland species.  Mass Audubon has restored several grasslands sustain populations in this important guild.
• The IBA Program and Mass Audubon’s land protection program identify and protect large and extensive interior upland forest tracts, and our Advocacy Department supports efforts of state agencies to protect and appropriately manage large forest blocks that protect interior forest bird species including such familiar species as Wood Thrush and Eastern Wood-Pewee that are suffering consistent declines over much of their range. 
• Our Birds to Watch Program monitors  potentially declining species such as the Whip-poor-will and other successional and shrub land species.  Research has also been undertaken to determine  the potential habitat value of power line right-of-ways to early successional bird species.
• The 2nd Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas will provide the most up-to-date information on the status of all of the Commonwealth’s breeding birds as well as record the changes in distribution and abundance of many species since Atlas 1.
• The Report identified collisions with lighted structures as a major source of avian mortality during migration, and our award-winning Lights Out Boston responds to that threat.
•  Mass Audubon has aggressively reduced its carbon footprint through conservation, efficiency, and purchase and production of renewable energy to contribute to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Our integration of science and advocacy has been applied to the environmental review of the Cape Wind Energy project in Nantucket Sound in order to better understand the potential impacts of this major renewable energy project on birds using the Sound.