Saving the Cerulean Warbler

Members of The Bird Conservation Alliance have raised funds for the BCA International Appeal for 2007, Saving the Cerulean Warbler to help North America's fastest declining neotropical songbird. Organizations helped save the Cerulean Warbler by raising funds for the Appeal. These organizations include: Maryland Ornithological Society at $2000, Houston Audubon Society at $1000, Ft. Worth Audubon Society, Northern Virginia Bird Club at $100, Wisconsin Society for Ornithology at $616, Brooklyn Bird Club at $25, and birdathon efforts by George M. Jett for the Southern Maryland Audubon Society annual fund raising birdathon raised $2,957.50 and Peter Dorosh raised $595.45 for the appeal. Birdathon efforts for the World Series of Birding by The Restarts (a PIF/IMBD team) resulted in just over $1,000 and pledges are still being collected for this effort.

The funds will be used to purchase 1,000 acres of land to expand the existing Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve in the Rio Chucurí river basin in Santander, Colombia, as well as to outfit forest guards, train local guides for ecotourism, and support other conservation efforts for the species.

The Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve is a key site for the species, run by American Bird Conservancy partner, Fundación ProAves. It contains particularly high concentrations of Ceruleans as well as two critically endangered species found nowhere else on Earth - the Gorgeted Wood-quail and Mountain Grackle - which have led the site to be recognized by the Alliance for Zero Extinction. Other ABC Green List migrants such as the Golden-winged Warbler, Olive-sided Flycatcher, and Canada Warbler also rely on the area.

The Cerulean Warbler is the only globally threatened neotropical migratory songbird that winters exclusively in South America, primarily in the subtropical humid forests of the Northern Andes of Colombia and Venezuela. It is threatened by fragmentation and habitat loss on its wintering grounds, and by hazards such as mountaintop mining and collisions with communication towers and tall buildings on its breeding grounds and during migration.

For more information contact the Bird Conservation Alliance Director, , at American Bird Conservancy.