About the Program

Yellow-headed blackbird © Ross Geredien

The Nature Conservancy’s Migratory Bird Program helps ensure that protection efforts appropriately address the special habitat needs of wide-ranging and migratory birds. Conservation ornithologists and planners from the Conservancy identify networks of habitats needed by bird species throughout North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, then design plans and implement strategies to conserve them at the local level.

Through the Migratory Bird Program’s projects, remarkable progress is being made to:

• conserve the grassland birds of North American’s western Great Plains, 
• identify and protect a network of sites to assure high-quality stopover habitats around the Gulf of Mexico, and 
• identify priority habitats in Latin America for more than 1,200 bird species in most urgent need of protection

Species management abstracts for more than 130 birds of conservation and management concern are available on ConserveOnline, a public library of conservation tools, techniques and experience. These abstracts are concise descriptions of the natural history, management requirements and research needs of selected species of birds. They are developed with and funded by a variety of organizations and institutions, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Canon U.S.A., Inc; and maintained by the Migratory Bird Program and Association for Biodiversity Information's central zoology staff.