Biologists from Rice Lake and Tamarac National Wildlife Refuges and Migratory Birds biologist Tom Will helped to design and implement a workshop on forest birds hosted by the Chippewa National Forest in July 2006. 

The workshop was a special project of Bird Conservation Minnesota’s Boreal Hardwood Transition Bird Conservation Region Conservation Planning Committee.  Will organized a morning session to provide an overview of national, regional, state, and local bird conservation along a continuum from continental to local scales and from planning to implementation. 

On the second day of the workshop, participants visited seven national forest sites on which priority bird species had been recorded on a regular basis.  In the field, biologists described site characteristics that seemed particularly suited for the target species and helped foresters to develop specific prescriptions to move forest management toward producing these desired conditions as forests matured. 

These discussions in the field between bird biologists and forest managers were both novel and productive.  Results will be posted soon on the Bird Conservation Minnesota website (http://www.birdconservationminnesota.org/).