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So urban parks are both tremendous opportunity
and a tremendous challenge.
We have thousands and thousands of people who are coming out
to enjoy them every year, and we want those folks
out enjoying the park.
We also have birds, and rocky intertidal critters,
and mammals, and plant communities
that are holding on and surviving
in this densely populated area.
So our fundamental challenge is balancing protection
of the resources of the park with visitor use
and all the other uses associated with an urban harbor
and the islands out here.
So the park includes over 35 islands and peninsulas
in Boston Harbor.
So you're right off the city skyline.
So the view right behind me, you're
constantly brought back to the fact
that there are millions of people at your doorstep.
Nesting water birds are a resource
that's been identified as being one of the things that's
really unique to Boston Harbor and special about the park.
And the Park Service is held accountable for being
able to manage, to try and protect those species,
to pay attention to how they're doing.
So this monitoring protocol was set up
to look at a few different species of birds, wading birds,
herons and egrets, double crested cormorants,
a few different species of gulls,
shore birds that nest on the beaches,
all of these birds that really rely
on this unique coastal habitat.
And our goal is to go out on an annual basis
and see how they're doing, keep track of how they're doing,
find out if there are changes over time,
trends that we can see happening.
So we do it every year.
We don't do all of the same work every year.
We actually work on a three-year rotation.
So in three years, we've managed to get around
to all of the things we want to keep track of in the islands.
So by doing it every three years,
we are able to put together a timeline that
lets us see changes as they happen while there's still
time to do something about it.
So hopefully we can catch declines or shifts in location
more readily than if we only came
in every 10 years or every 20 years and did a snapshot.
Volunteers have been an awesome part of this program.
I started this work working solo or with other researchers.
And the Park Service wanted to make it a volunteer program.
And I thought, oh, my god.
How is that ever going to work?
And, in fact, it's the part that I think I love best about it.
The Coastal Breeding Bird Monitoring Program
is really our best example of citizen science right now.
These volunteers are dedicated and become real advocates
both for the park and for the biodiversity of the park.
Inventory and monitoring monitors
parks across the nation.
So while you might be monitoring birds in Boston Harbor islands,
we're also monitoring them at Manassas National Battlefield
Park.
It's a park that preserves the Civil War landscape.
It's surrounded by suburban development.
It's not far from Washington DC.
And so it's an urban park.
It's really an oasis for all kinds of wildlife,
including forest and grassland birds.
Because of its urban setting, Manassas
is subject to traffic noise.
There are roads that go right through the park,
and air pollution.
And those are things that birds can be very sensitive to.
So when we monitor birds in Manassas,
we're checking on how they're fairing
in the face of these things.
The diversity of bird species at Manassas
really shows how valuable they are to wildlife.
Rock Creek Park, which is set in the middle
of the city of Washington DC has a similar role.
Rock Creek is a really special place.
It's been protected for a long time,
and that has allowed some really mature trees to develop here.
And there are certain wildlife species that really
need those big, mature trees.
People might be really surprised to learn
the number of animals that live an urban parks like this.
There are animals you see, like Fox, squirrels,
and then there are a lot of animals that you may not ever
see.
There's flying squirrels, there are bats, brown bats, red bats.
There's even a threatened northern long-eared bat
in this park.
It's really incredible that an urban park
can be home to some of these the most vulnerable species.
The forest is what makes up the habitat for all the wildlife
that lives in this park.
And it's really one of the things
that people enjoy when they visit here.
Our monitoring gives us a sense of the health of the forest.
It gives us a picture of the species balance of plants,
the age of the forest, and whether it's under any stress.
We're using science to know the condition
of these important places, and we're not guessing.
That's why it's so important that we're
doing this for the long term.
The particular value of the inventory monitoring program
in an urban park is that any urban environment
is going to have a lot of stressors
and unknown stressors in the future.
The monitoring that we do allows us
to understand what's going on with the biodiversity
and ecosystem in the park amidst that chaos
of the urban environment.