U.S. NABCI Strategic PlanUS NABCI Logo: blue text on with a red check suggesting a bird flying

The U.S. NABCI Committee facilitates collaborative partnerships that advance biological, social, and scientific priorities for North American bird conservation; this document identifies five strategic goals for 2022-2027 and enumerates actions and tasks to achieve these goals over the next few years. The goal of this strategic plan is to define U.S. NABCI’s role in guiding a coordinated response to the loss of 3 billion birds within the NABCI partnership and broader conservation community. Access a PDF of the Strategic Plan here and view the plan below.

Preface: This strategic plan will be treated as a living document and evolve as the activities and priorities of the NABCI Committee, broader conservation community, and society at large evolve and change. Many of the goals, subgoals, and tasks described in this document involve dynamic issues and/or novel concepts, and the NABCI Committee’s actions and role relative to them may change as they continue to advance. The NABCI Committee will develop a process to re-evaluate the content of this strategic plan on a regular basis and modify goals, subgoals, and tasks as necessary to keep the plan relevant and continue to guide the NABCI Committee’s priorities.

Goals:

  1. Facilitate unprecedented and authentic coalitions across the hemisphere to achieve strategic conservation
  2. Integrate and strengthen natural and social science capacity across the bird conservation community to support environmental and human wellbeing
  3. Promote strategic conservation delivery guided by well-developed strategies and measured outcomes
  4. Build an equitable and inclusive coalition to champion bold, new legislation and policies for the protection of migratory and endemic birds in the United States
  5. Unify communication to restore bird populations while ensuring communication is accessible and relevant to the broader community

This Strategic Plan process was a collaborative effort among the NABCI community, and was passed by the partnership on August 10, 2022. Consistent partnership input, collaborative editing, and continuous feedback from NABCI leadership informed the development of this strategic plan. Todd Fearer was our fearless strategic plan process leader. Todd went above and beyond his Committee roles to engage the NABCI community. The NABCI Executive Council and Committee extend their gratitude to Todd and the 3 Billion Birds group. A special thank you to Nicole Michel for providing an Equity and Inclusion lens to this strategic plan and ensuring these themes were interwoven and centered throughout the plan.

Goal 1: Facilitate unprecedented and authentic coalitions across the hemisphere to achieve strategic conservation.

Subgoal 1: Grow NABCI’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Community of Practice.

  1. Enhance NABCI partners’ ability to engage communities by providing tools to conservation practitioners
  2. Cultivate inclusive and safe spaces for people in the conservation community to build relationships and share their lived experiences and knowledge
  3. Highlight conservation success stories led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and other systemically underserved communities
  4. Center the Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Principles into the work of the NABCI Committee and all Subcommittees

Subgoal 2: Improve engagement with communities to amplify their voices as it relates to our shared environmental and social concerns.

  1. Facilitate new partnerships with urban and suburban community groups
  2. Create paths to build diverse leadership within NABCI and among the conservation community
  3. Support new partners outside of bird conservation and provide a space to establish collaborative efforts to meet shared objectives
    1. Amplify exemplars of how increasing equity results in better conservation
  4. Coordinate across partners to integrate and work towards One Health* goals

*One Health is a holistic approach to achieving positive health outcomes by recognizing the interconnections between people, wildlife, and our shared environment. This approach mobilizes multiple sectors, disciplines, and communities at varying levels of society to work together to foster well-being and address threats to health and ecosystems while addressing the collective need for clean water, energy and air, and centering equitable solutions to climate change, environmental hazards, and Environmental Justice.

Subgoal 3: Improve and enhance coordination with leadership across agencies and connect bird conservation priorities to emergent and ongoing opportunities, priorities, and initiatives.

  1. Continue to elevate the bird loss crisis to federal agency leadership, making it an agency priority
  1. Amplify and connect with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) 5 in 1 team
  2. Promote and increase support of federal agency capacity to support bird conservation
  1. Produce State of the Birds reports synthesizing science that demonstrates the effectiveness of key policies, programs, and initiatives to provide an effective communication tool that encourages science-based conservation policy
  2. Collaborate with State Agencies on how State Wildlife Action Plans (and beyond) could engage with communities more explicitly; Work with State Wildlife Action Plan Coordinators to align bird conservation and social priorities
  3. Develop tools to identify and work to remove operational silos where they exist among conservation organizations

Subgoal 4:  Amplify and grow existing partnerships

  1. Create resources that promote effective collaboration that can assist with on-boarding new NABCI Committee members as well as provide continued training for existing members
  2. Continue to improve coordination among the Migratory Bird Joint Ventures (MBJVs), Waterbird Partnership, Shorebird Partnership, Partners In Flight (PIF), and North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP).
  3. Support the broad range of grassland conservation efforts
  4. Recognize the effort required to sustain partnerships by encouraging support for/development of dedicated support positions to sustain the 3 Billion Birds (3BB) initiatives (3BB Communications Team, Bird Friendly Coalition, R2R)

Goal 2: Integrate and strengthen natural and social science capacity across the bird conservation community to support environmental and human wellbeing

Subgoal 1: Advance species recovery efforts and integration of these efforts into landscape conservation initiatives

  1. Emphasize the development of science (biological and social) to focus bird community efforts on recovering bird populations through integration with MBJVs and other landscape initiatives.
  2. Support efforts to integrate species recovery frameworks into the species working groups, PIF, and others engaged in full annual cycle conservation.
  3. NABCI serves as a forum for species recovery efforts to facilitate project coordination and minimize overlap and redundancies across species working groups.

Subgoal 2:  Promote collaboration between scientists, managers, and decision-makers to produce science that directly informs conservation and management

  1. Authentically engage and include Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in conservation efforts
  2. Prioritize consistent, sustained engagement with Latin American and Caribbean partners
  3. Produce guiding documents describing co-production (i.e., collaborations between scientists and managers) and how to implement it in bird conservation.

Subgoal 3: Enhance engagement with a broader suite of scientists outside of bird conservation from a diversity of agencies, universities, and organizations

  1. Assess and inventory science capacity and resources of NABCI partners to better align existing science capacity and identify and address gaps
  2. Work with funding agencies and organizations to improve equitable access to research funding
  3. Support and expand the scientific basis and rationale of Bird Friendly initiatives

Subgoal 4: Elevate the need and application of standardized, long-term monitoring, including demographic monitoring

  1. Promote a common set of standards to facilitate development of effective monitoring protocols
  2. Support research efforts to tie bird metrics to ecosystem function and human well-being metrics
  3. Advise and determine beneficial tools, methodologies, systems, approaches to data collection, monitoring, analyses to guide and foster bird conservation within the limitations of each entity’s mission
  4. Provide guidance for customizing and building functionality into database platforms (e.g., eBird, Avian Knowledge Network [AKN]) to make resources more easily accessible to and used by partners and open to the public.
  5. Promote community science programs that engage local communities in monitoring efforts

Goal 3:  Promote strategic conservation delivery guided by well-developed strategies and measured outcomes

Subgoal 1:  Champion road maps for population recovery 

  1. Provide guidance for developing strategic frameworks that focus, align, coordinate, and measure the effectiveness of our investments in the conservation of these target habitats and birds.
  2. Ensure that conservation strategies are developed and implemented by equitable and inclusive coalitions where all voices can be heard.
  3. Develop a standardized prioritization framework that informs Conservation Investment Strategies utilizing structured decision making.
  4. Improve integration of bird initiative, species working group, and MBJV planning with formal federal and state planning efforts.
  5. Improve engagement with the Flyways, especially the non-game technical staff.

Subgoal 2: Enhance capacity for full annual cycle conservation

  1. Identify and reduce barriers to participation in migratory stop-over and wintering grounds conservation efforts.
  2. Foster collaborative opportunities for full annual cycle conservation that intentionally and consistently engage international partners throughout the hemisphere.

Subgoal 3:  Develop and integrate human well-being and biodiversity goals/metrics into implementation strategies 

  1. Identify overlaps with bird conservation and human well-being objectives for specific ecosystems &/or sites, and work with communities to authentically co-develop objectives and implement actions to address objectives.
  2. Develop bird-based biodiversity metrics that can be adopted by the private sector and finance community

Goal 4: Build an equitable and inclusive coalition to champion bold, new legislation and policies for the protection of migratory and endemic birds in the United States.

Subgoal 1: Provide tools and resources that inform non-federal NABCI partners’ advocacy for policy priorities

  1. Improve integration and coordination with the Association of Joint Venture Management Boards (AJVMB)
  2. Promote a greater emphasis on proactive conservation strategies (versus regulatory responsibilities) by federal and state agencies as well as the long-term internal capacity to effectively implement proactive conservation

Subgoal 2:  Identify and prioritize policy issues that would benefit from NABCI partner information (not advocacy)

  1. Integrate bird conservation into broader sustainability and climate initiatives and policies
  2. Promote programs and policies that facilitate local collaborator participation and partnerships
  3. Facilitate efficient translation of science to inform policy (e.g., State of the Birds, Farm Bill)
  4. Seek opportunities for greater engagement with regulatory entities and federal oversight committees

Goal 5: Unify communication to restore bird populations while ensuring communication is accessible and relevant to the broader community.

Subgoal 1:  Coordinate science, policy, and communications to maximize our ability to meet objectives.

  1. Facilitate unification of NABCI partner organization messaging and identify key messages to amplify through partner communications teams to the broader conservation community
  2. NABCI Communications Subcommittee generates improved connections among the NABCI Committee and larger conservation community to facilitate greater inclusivity, transparency, and engagement with message development and distribution
  3. Map existing bird conservation networks to better understand established pathways of information exchange among NABCI partner organizations and facilitate improved flow of information
  1. Develop a Communication and Coordination Strategy for each NABCI Subcommittee
  2. Continue to seek avenues for making NABCI Committee and Subcommittee meetings more accessible

Subgoal 2: Increase the relevance of bird conservation to broader interest groups.

  1. Work with Human Dimensions/Social Science (HD/SS) Subcommittee to develop more effective strategies for engaging audiences both within and outside of our core bird conservation network
  2. Communicate the relationships between bird conservation and human wellbeing and increase awareness of the value of bird conservation beyond the conservation community

3 Billion Birds Group members: Todd Fearer, Miyoko Chu, Tammy VerCauteren, John Alexander, Bill Uihlein, Geoff Geupel, Steve Albert, Ruth Bennett, Ken Rosenberg, EJ Williams, Paul Schmidt, Brian Smith, Nicole Michel, and Dave Treviño.