Implementing the Standardized North American Marsh Bird Monitoring Program in Southern Ontario

During the development of the new sampling scheme in southern Ontario, we engaged members of the Ontario Eastern Habitat Joint Venture (OEHJV) and other GLMMP partners to identify marsh bird conservation and management questions of interest to be built into the new experimental design. As a result, the new sampling framework is stratified based on inland and Great Lakes coastal wetlands, and wetlands within and outside Great Lakes Areas of Concern. The framework also includes wetlands managed under NAWMP and unmanaged wetlands. These strata will yield data to answer questions of management interest within southern Ontario, while also contributing to the continent-wide monitoring program for marsh birds. At the outset of the project, many of the sample points within the new sampling framework in southern Ontario had been ground-truthed and landowner permission had been obtained in most locations where needed. We had also completed one season of field surveys at the new sample points in the spring and early summer of 2016. The objectives of the project were to complete remaining tasks associated with implementing the Standardized North American Marsh Bird Monitoring Program in southern Ontario. These tasks were:

1) seek landowner permission to access remaining sample points that have not yet been groundtruthed;

2) trouble-shoot and finalize permanent scannable bird and habitat field forms;

3) complete permanent maps of each survey route to be used during future annual sampling; and

4) trouble-shoot and finalize data pathway from scannable field forms to permanent data archive within BSC’s Nature Counts database, part of the Avian Knowledge Network.