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State of the Birds partnership
This year’s report was developed by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative in partnership with The National Gap Analysis Program at the University of Idaho, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The Nature Conservancy, American Bird Conservancy, Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Defense/DoD Partners in Flight, Klamath Bird Observatory, National Audubon Society, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and USDA Forest Service.

To determine the stewardship responsibilities and conservation opportunities for birds on public lands and waters, U.S. bird distribution information was overlaid onto a map of public land ownership (PAD-US) to determine the percentage of each species’ distribution on public land.  To represent the most accurate breeding and wintering distributions of birds in the contiguous 48 states, bird observation data from eBird (www.ebird.org) were analyzed.  For Alaska bird distributions, vegetation layers were used to modify bird range data from the Alaska Gap Analysis Project and NatureServe. State of Hawaii biologists compiled and analyzed distributions for Hawaiian bird species. Bird distributions for Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa were based on distribution of suitable habitat identified by local experts. For most ocean species, the best available colony-nesting data were used to evaluate the breeding distribution. 

GAP’s Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US version 1.1) was used to determine land ownership and biodiversity protection status of all public lands for the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

GAP’s National Land Cover data were used to estimate the extent of each primary habitat within public lands.   The 590 ecological systems and land-use classes were categorized into primary habitat designations for the analysis. These data were then overlaid with PAD-US to calculate the area of each primary habitat on public lands (not including coasts, islands, and oceans).

To calculate the percentage of each species’ distribution within public land ownership and biodiversity protection categories for the continental U.S., the bird distribution model or frequency map for each bird species was projected onto PAD-US. By combining these datasets, analysts calculated the percentages of species distributions on public lands and identified public agencies responsible for managing lands where each species occurred.

PAD-US version 1.1 included significant contributions and large aggregated data sets from BLM, USFS, GreenInfo Network, and The Nature Conservancy. USGS-GAP relies on authoritative sources, such as federal, state, local, nongovernmental organizations, and land trusts to provide valuable spatial and attribute data to improve and expand PAD-US. We encourage agencies and organizations with protected areas data to contact USGS-GAP. PAD-U.S. 1.2, the newest update, is now available for download.

More information:

State of the Birds Science Info Factsheet (6.6 mb pdf)

State of the Birds report (4.4 Mb pdf)

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Visit the State of the Birds website