Population and habitat assessment: Monitoring bird populations over large areas: Introduction

Monitoring provides essential information about status and change in bird populations. For Neotropical Migrant Birds (NTMBs), the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) has been particularly influential in documenting regional population change and often is cited as justification for management actions. However, as with most bird surveys, the design of the BBS, and the geographic scale of the information, often limits its use either in evaluating the response of bird populations to management, or in identifying causes of population change.