NCCN Landbird Monitoring Data Package, 2005-2023

This data package contains North Coast and Cascades Network (NCCN) Inventory and Monitoring Program landbird monitoring data collected during 2005-2023 at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park (LEWI), Mount Rainier National Park (MORA), North Cascades National Park Complex (NOCA), Olympic National Park (OLYM), and San Juan Island National Historical Park (SAJH).

The protocol, publications, and all other associated links can be found in the project reference at: NCCN Landbird Monitoring https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2097578

National parks in the North Coast and Cascades Network (NCCN) can fulfill vital roles as refuges for bird species dependent on late-successional forest conditions and as reference sites for assessing the effects of land-use and land-cover changes on bird populations throughout the larger Pacific Northwest region. These changes may result from regional processes such as land conversion and forest management, or from broader-scale phenomena such as global climate change. Monitoring population trends at ‘control’ sites in national parks is especially important because the parks are among the few sites in the United States where population trends resulting from large-scale regional or global change patterns are relatively unaffected by local changes in land use. Long-term monitoring of landbirds throughout the NCCN provides information that can inform decisions about important management issues in the parks, including visitor impacts, fire management, and the effects of introduced species.

Landbirds are vital to every Northwest ecosystem. They are critical food-chain links, eating millions of seeds and insects and in turn, are prey for other creatures. Because they have specific needs for food, nest sites, and habitats they are easily impacted by change. For these reasons, birds are among the most sensitive indicators of ecosystem health and monitoring them is one of the most efficient ways to take the ecological pulse of an area.

Surveys were conducted in three large wilderness parks: North Cascades (NOCA), Olympic (OLYM), and Mount Rainier (MORA) National Parks and in two small parks: Lewis and Clark National Historical Park (LEWI) and San Juan Island National Historical Park (SAJH).

Objectives are to 1) detect trends in the density of as many landbird species (including passerines, near-passerines, and galliformes) as possible throughout accessible areas of five NCCN parks during the breeding season and 2) track changes in the breeding season distribution of landbird species throughout accessible areas of the large wilderness parks.