Montana’s Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions Program (IMBCR) - Monitoring for Management and Conservation

Abstract

Conservation partners have conducted landbird monitoring across Montana, under the Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR) program, since 2009. Today, the IMBCR program represents the most rigorous breeding landbird monitoring program in the US. IMBCR is made possible via a broad partnership of multiple government and nongovernment agencies from the Great Plains to the Intermountain West. The sampling framework allows for inference about avian populations at multiple scales, from a National Forest or Bureau of Land Management field office, up to the state and even ecoregion level. The state of Montana is stratified into over thirty different management areas based on partners’ needs and interests. Each year, landbird density and occupancy estimates are produced for individual management areas, which are combined to produce regional estimates. Bayesian analyses provide robust estimates of population trend over time and a new online tool will provide habitat-specific population estimates for each management area. Managers can use these baseline estimates and habitat-specific information for project-level planning and environmental assessments. The IMBCR program provides context for targeted effectiveness monitoring in project areas to evaluate impacts of land-use change or conservation actions. We highlight several case studies from the Intermountain West, where short-term monitoring efforts leverage the long-term data from IMBCR to evaluate avian response to land management practices.