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AVIAN INVENTORY
AND MONITORING NEEDS
FOR GATEWAY NATIONAL RECREATION AREA:
A REVIEW OF AVAILABLE LITERATURE AND DATA
Technical Report NPS/NER/NRTR--2006/061
David S. Mizrahi,
Ph. D.
New Jersey Audubon Society
Vice president for research
Center for Research and Education
600 North Route 47
Cape May Court House, NJ 08210
October 2006
U.S. Department of the Interior
National Park Service
Northeast Region
Boston, Massachusetts
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Executive Summary
In 1999, the National Park Service (NPS) announced the "Natural Resource Challenge" for preserving natural resources in parks. As part of the challenge, the National Park Service implemented a strategy designed to institutionalize natural resource inventory and monitoring on a programmatic basis throughout the agency. As a result the NPS developed the Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program.
This program ensures that the approximately 270 park units with significant natural resources possess the resource information needed for effective, science-based managerial decision-making and resource protection required as part of the Natural Resource Challenge. One of the many goals of the I&M Program is to gather all of the existing natural resource information for each of the I&M parks and compile it electronically in order to make it easily accessible and available for park management purposes.
Compilation of natural resource information, however, is just the first step. Information evaluation and interpretation is paramount to developing effective resource management strategies. With the preponderance of species that must be considered by park managers, the need for expert evaluation of existing taxa-specific information exists. When information is lacking, park managers may need advice regarding how best to fill gaps in knowledge, and where or how to allocate management resources to benefit species of greatest concern.
For park managers to develop effective strategies to maintain the viability of avian populations they must know which populations occur in their parks, their status, and potential threats. New Jersey Audubon Society (NJAS), under a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service (NPS), conducted a comprehensive review of existing avian information for Gateway National Recreation Area (GATE) and Fire Island National Seashore (FIIS), two parks within NPS's Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network.
Early in this process of reviewing NPSpecies we realized that looking at the park as a single entity, when in fact it encompassed three different and ecologically distinct units, would be ineffective at addressing the informational needs of resource managers. Consequently, we reviewed and evaluated avian occurrence, status, and abundance information for the Sandy Hook, Staten Island, and the Jamaica Bay/Breezy Point units separately, and created an NPSpecies-compatible database for each unit. We also developed a systematic method to classify the residency status of species that occur during more than one distinct period of the annual cycle, and a standardized way to present additional residency status and abundance information in the database.
Generally, we found the NPSpecies database was missing significant amounts of information and contained many inaccuracies for avian species occurring at GATE. After careful review of current documents and data sets, and with a working knowledge of avian abundance and distribution patterns in the region immediate to the park, we completed all fields in the GATE database and corrected inaccuracies. Our review of NPSpecies also revealed apparent data gaps Island unit, and possibly the Breezy Point portion of the Jamaica Bay/Breezy Point unit.
We used NatureBib and other bibliographic databases to identify information sources and data sets to use in evaluating existing knowledge gaps regarding GATE's avian resources. With the preponderance of species that must be considered by park managers, and limits on resources available to conduct active species management, the need to prioritize among species is important. Given this, our assessment of avian resource management needs was made in light of regional and national conservation objectives.
Our review mostly focused on comprehensive, multi-year reports and published, peer-reviewed manuscripts. Additionally, we reviewed recent scientific permit applications for research and monitoring efforts at GATE. We also interviewed several natural resource staff from each GATE unit to augment our perspective regarding inventory and monitoring needs throughout the park.
We found that several conservation priority species, across all avian groups, generally lack sufficient data to make informed resource management. Seaside Sparrow and Salt Marsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow (passerines), Northern Harrier and American Kestrel (raptors), American Oystercatcher and American Woodcock (shorebirds), American Black Duck (waterfowl), and Black Rail (waterbirds), are examples of the species that may require additional inventory and monitoring to support informed management actions. Additionally, we found that information about avian species during migration was lacking for some avian taxa.
For those species, species groups, or guilds identified as requiring additional abundance and distribution data, we also outlined several methods (e.g., point counts, MAPS) that could be used to accomplish inventory and monitoring needs.
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