Meeting and Project Summaries for Boreal Partners in Flight Active

Boreal Partners in Flight is a coalition of individuals who are working together to help conserve bird populations throughout boreal regions of North America. Boreal Partners in Flight is the official Alaska state working group of the international Partners in Flight program. We also have many members from Canada because we share many of the same species, habitats, and problems. The international...

Boreal Partners in Flight has five major regional projects designed to monitor broad-scale trends in populations of landbirds. There are also many projects throughout Alaska that address specific research questions or local monitoring needs.

Alaska provides breeding habitat for >140 regularly occurring species of landbirds, half of which breed predominantly north of the U.S.–Canada border. The road-based North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) provides some data on population trends in Alaska, but most northern species are inadequately monitored by that continental program because of a paucity of roads. Boreal Partners in Flight...

Alaska lies at the convergence of four major global migration flyways and encompasses a diverse array of important landbird habitats. Temperate rainforests tower along the southern coast, boreal forests span the vast interior, and low-lying tundra blankets the continent’s northern and western fringes.

Five Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs) were designated in Alaska as part of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative in order provide a framework that would facilitate coordinated conservation and evaluations of major bird initiatives.

Here are a few festivals celebrating birds around the state of Alaska.

Thirty-one raptor species, including 18 species of diurnal raptors (Orders Accipitriformes and Falconiformes) and 13 species of owls (Order Strigiformes), have been documented in Alaska, 23 of which are known to breed within the state.

Over the past 20 years, Alaskans have witnessed a startling increase of beak deformities among Black-capped Chickadees and other species of resident birds. This disease, called avian keratin disorder (AKD), is characterized by debilitating beak overgrowth and other abnormalities of keratinized tissues. Affected birds have difficulty feeding and preening, and may suffer high rates of mortality.

On this page, learn about USGS work on Beak Deformities and Boreal Partners in Flight.