One of the major themes emanating from the 2015-bird-partnership-workshop was the idea of exploring unified science capacity. After the Texas Workshop, the Tri-initiative Science Team (TriST), Partners in Flight Science Committee, and the North American Waterfowl Management Plan Science Support Team (NSST) met to discuss and lay out the next steps needed to implement this desired collaboration. The groups decided to explore the unified science concept on a trial basis over a two-year period, and the result was a draft Statement of Purpose for a Transitional Unified Science Team (TrUST). The mission for this team would be to provide the science support necessary for successful implementation of coordinated and full life cycle bird conservation actions across all taxa and geographic scales by maximizing creative synergy and efficiency through increased communication and collaboration on projects of shared priority.
The TrUST draft prospectus has circulated among representative oversight bodies and has been endorsed by the U.S. NABCI Committee (August 2015). TriST and the NSST met together in October 2015, April 2016, and December 2016 and have drafted a prioritized list of joint projects of mutual concern on which they plan to work collaboratively as TrUST. These projects are now included in the TrUST draft prospectus. For example, TrUST and the Joint Venture science network now are collaborating on assessing the conservation vulnerability of landbirds, shorebirds, waterbirds, and waterfowl at both global and regional (BCR) scales in order to realize the vision of one-stop conservation assessment via the Avian Conservation Assessment Database.