One of the tools being used to foster implementation in Bird Conservation Regions is the concept of focus areas which are geographically explicit areas supporting general habitat characteristics preferred by priority birds. Focus areas are not the only areas within a BCR that provide basic habitat needs for priority species but are geographic areas that have been identified by the bird conservation community as areas of high conservation potential because of their biological attributes at the landscape scale. The New England/Mid-Atlantic bird focus areas were defined by staff of partner agencies and organizations during the BCR 30 all-bird workshop held in December 2004, as well as during other workshops and efforts focused on bird conservation within the region. Criteria developed for designating waterfowl focus areas have been adopted for use in defining other bird focus areas within BCR 30. These are:

1. Areas are regionally important to one or more life history stages or seasonal-use periods.

2. Focus areas are developed within the context of landscape-level conservation and biodiversity.

3. Focus areas are made up of discrete and distinguishable habitats or habitat complexes demonstrating clear ornithological importance. The boundaries are defined using ecological factors such as wetlands and wetland buffers.

4. Focus areas are large enough to supply all the necessary requirements for survival during the season for which it is important, except where small, disjunct areas are critical to survival and a biological connection is made, such as areas used by migrating shorebirds.

The focus areas depicted in this plan should be considered an initial draft set for the BCR and will need to be periodically revised as new tools become available to aid in site selection and enhanced through a review process. The process used to generate focus areas has important limitations that should be understood by anyone using the maps or list in this plan. The list of focus areas is biased in terms of taxonomic groups, habitats, jurisdictions, and existing knowledge. Not all bird experts in the region attended BCR 30 workshops where lines were drawn on maps, and some geographic areas and species groups were better represented than others. In the spirit of consensus, we tended to be inclusive with focus areas suggested. No attempt was made to verify the importance of each focus area identified or to rank them or quantify their relative contributions to different bird species or groups. It is important to consider that due to differences in their ecology, some avian taxa lend themselves to the concept of focus areas better than others. Species that tend to occur in large congregations and/or in relatively open habitats that are easily observed (e.g., shorebirds at beaches or waterfowl in bays) are likely covered more completely by current focus areas than are species that are secretive, widely dispersed, typically occur in small numbers, or use habitats that are difficult to observe (e.g., secretive marsh birds). Over the long-term, model-based approaches should be used for widely distributed species to determine the most suitable habitats across the landscape to focus conservation efforts on (see conservation design discussion in Chapter 6). In this draft, maps of focus areas for each bird group have been created and illustrate where overlap occurs in areas considered to be important for the different taxonomic groups and where conservation efforts can benefit multiple groups of birds. Focus areas targeted for one taxonomic group are not necessarily less important than focus areas supporting multiple group of birds, because they might be extremely important for some of the highest priority species in that single bird group. Statistics for individual focus areas (e.g., acres/hectares, acres protected, etc.) can be found in Appendix A of the BCR 30 Plan at http://www.acjv.org/bcr30.htm.

References for process of delineating focus areas for BCR 30:

1) BCR 30 Implementation Plan - http://www.acjv.org/bcr30.htm

2) ACJV Waterfowl Implementation Plan Focus Areas – Guidelines for delineation of waterfowl focus areas can be found in the ACJV WIP section titled The Plan, http://acjv.org/wip/acjv_wip_main.pdf, page 66, Item 7.2, Important Geographic Areas for Waterfowl Habitat Conservation in the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture.

Additional Guidance on delineation of BCR focus areas:

1) White paper titled “SUGGESTIONS FOR A SUCCESSFUL BIRD CONSERVATION REGION WORKSHOP” by David Pashley – U.S. NABCI Coordinator, Art Martell – Canadian NABCI Coordinator, Craig Watson – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Kevin Loftus – Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and Andrew Milliken - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2001. These suggestions are derived from successful Bird Conservation Region (BCR) meetings for the South Atlantic Migratory Bird Initiative (part of BCR 27) and the Lower Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Plain (BCR 13). Available upon request.

2) BCR Coordinators Workshop, Patuxent National Wildlife Research Center, October 13, 2004. Minutes include discussion of core elements for BCR planning, of which one component is the delineation of focus areas. Available upon request.