Mapping California’s Important Bird Areas Mapping California’s Important Bird Areas National Audubon Society © 2008 For questions or comments, please visit our website (http://www.ca.audubon.org/iba), or contact: Andrea Jones, Director of Important Bird Areas Program, Audubon California, 601 Embarcadero, Suite 14, Morro Bay, CA 93442, TEL: (805) 772-1995, FAX: (805) 772- 1995, Email: [email protected]. Mike Perlmutter, Bay Area Conservation Coordinator, Audubon California, 4225 Hollis Street, Emeryville, CA 94608, TEL: (510) 601-1866 ext. 231, FAX: (510) 601-1954, Email: [email protected]. William Monahan, Senior GIS Scientist, Audubon California, 4225 Hollis Street, Emeryville, CA 94608, TEL: (510) 601-1866 ext. 232, FAX: (510) 601-1954, Email: [email protected]. David Yun, GIS Supervisor, City of San Luis Obispo, 919 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401. TEL: (805) 781-7189, FAX: (805) 781-7198, Email: [email protected]. Cover: Black Rail (Laterallus jamaicensis) by John James Audubon. Summary Important Bird Areas (IBAs) identify sites that provide essential habitat for birds. As such they establish a useful framework for helping guide efforts to conserve birds statewide. Audubon California determined that detailed IBA maps are necessary for on-the-ground IBA conservation to be planned and carried out in an effective and efficient fashion. Beginning in 2006, Audubon California set out to define and map the geographic boundaries of the 148 sites originally designated by bird experts around the state. The present document, Mapping California’s Important Bird Areas, serves as a general technical report describing our mapping methodology and basic summary results. It accompanies Version 1.0 of our new Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database containing the boundaries and attributes of California’s Important Bird Areas. Acknowledgments David Yun’s students from California Polytechnic State University, Sarah Bailey and Kerri Johnson, conducted their senior thesis on this project and developed the methodology that we applied across California. They produced excellent reports and were a pleasure to work with. We also thank the following students who assisted with IBA mapping through their GIS coursework: Jackie Hancock, Ninah Hartley, Melinda Elster, and Tony Kochis. Meghan Jerolaman and Julie Messer also completed their senior thesis on the IBA mapping project and are thanked especially for their dedication to work through the summer to see the original map finished. During the review phase, Melinda Elster and Karen Velas both contributed considerable and valuable time to refining and editing IBA maps and providing good humor and expertise to the process. In the San Francisco Bay region, we thank the San Francisco Estuary Institute for providing access to the San Francisco Bay Ecoatlas, Tim Doherty at the Bay Conservation and Development Commission for providing information on and access to several key San Francisco Bay GIS datasets, Ryan Branciforte of the Bay Area Open Space Council for putting together the Bay Area Upland Goals GIS packet and BPAD, Tracy Love at the California Department of Fish and Game for providing California state park and parcel data for Bay Area counties, and Christina Freeman and Cindy Shafer at California State Parks and Meg Peterson at East Bay Regional Parks for providing GIS data for their parks. Glenn Olson, Graham Chisholm, Gary Langham, Dan Taylor, Garrison Frost, Garry George, Alison Sheehey, Rodd Kelsey, and Vance Russell from Audubon California provided important feedback throughout the mapping process. Dan Cooper is thanked for compiling the original site descriptions. While too many people to name, we thank all Audubon California chapters, bird clubs, and birding experts for originally nominating IBAs, editing the site descriptions, and helping delineate the site boundaries. Finally, we thank the Environmental Systems Research Institute for their generous Conservation Program Grant to Audubon California, which provided us with multiple licenses of ArcGIS software, training courses for staff, and free access to ArcGIS Online services. Table of Contents Overview..................................................................................................................... 1 Background ................................................................................................................ 1 Important Bird Areas.............................................................................................. 1 California’s Important Bird Areas.......................................................................... 1 Methods ..................................................................................................................... 3 Creating initial draft maps..................................................................................... 3 Review and refinement of boundaries................................................................... 7 Site summary statistics.......................................................................................... 8 Results ....................................................................................................................... 9 Accuracy.................................................................................................................. 9 Name revisions....................................................................................................... 9 Area ....................................................................................................................... 10 Land ownership .................................................................................................... 10 Land cover............................................................................................................. 12 Political boundaries ............................................................................................. 12 Discussion................................................................................................................ 13 Map representation.............................................................................................. 13 Data dissemination and future updates ............................................................. 13 Conservation ownership and stewardship ......................................................... 13 Future analysis ..................................................................................................... 14 References................................................................................................................ 15 Appendix 1 Example review form ........................................................................................A1.1 Appendix 2 Attributes provided in the geodatabase..........................................................A2.1 Appendix 3 Basic site attributes..........................................................................................A3.1 Appendix 4 Important Bird Areas by county .......................................................................A4.1 Appendix 5 Habitat associations.........................................................................................A5.1 Appendix 6 Important Bird Areas by Senate District..........................................................A6.1 Appendix 7 Important Bird Areas by Congressional District .............................................A7.1 Appendix 8 Important Bird Areas by Assembly District .....................................................A8.1 Mapping California’s Important Bird Areas, Audubon California, Page i Overview Important Bird Areas (IBAs) identify essential sites that provide habitat for (i) rare, threatened or endangered birds, (ii) exceptionally large congregations of shorebirds, or (iii) exceptionally large congregations of waterfowl. In an effort to promote conservation and awareness of these areas, Audubon California set out to define and map the geographic boundaries of all IBAs in California using a Geographic Information System (GIS). The present document serves as the general technical report describing our mapping methodology and basic summary results. Background Important Bird Areas Classification of Important Bird Areas (IBAs) began in Europe in 1985 by Birdlife International as a means to identify and encourage conservation of habitats for preserving avian biodiversity. This international conservation program was a response to growing concerns over bird habitat fragmentation and loss. Since the program’s inception, IBAs have been designated in six continents, nearly 200 countries and territories, and 48 of the 50 United States. As of 2008, there were over 10,000 IBAs throughout the world. While conferring no regulatory authority, a site's designation as an IBA is a powerful distinction which can be utilized to leverage conservation efforts. IBA status increases opportunities for land acquisition, restoration, conservation planning, public outreach, advocacy, and environmental education. In some cases, the IBA program has been used to establish legal protections for bird habitat. For example, the IBAs in New York State served as a model for the State Bird Conservation Area Program, which now legally integrates bird conservation into agency planning, management, and research. California’s Important Bird Areas The American Bird Conservatory and the National Audubon Society joined in the development of an IBA program in the United States. From 1995 to 1998, the California