Species at Risk Migratory Landbirds, Oil Sands Region

The old-forest landbird monitoring program was initiated in 2014. Old-forest songbirds are a priority for monitoring because they can be vulnerable to habitat disturbance, and their habitats are less common overall and difficult to restore once disturbed. This augmented program employs a stratified sampling design of point count surveys to improve monitoring of rarer songbirds of conservation concern. These data will also be used to validate models that predict bird population changes in response to oil sands activity and to further refine bird monitoring design. 2014 data includes records for 29 938 individuals representing 137 species from 2 490 sample points located among 123 survey areas. 2017 data includes records for 3014 individuals representing 88 species from 271 sample points located among 25 survey areas.