October 11 – November 1 (Tuesdays, 7:00 – 8:30 pm each week)

In less than a single human lifetime, 2.9 billion breeding adult birds have been lost from the United States and Canada, across every ecosystem, and including some of the most abundant and familiar bird species. In this course we will examine how we determine the abundance and distribution of different bird species, for both bird populations in Wisconsin and at the national level. State and federal monitoring programs will also be discussed. We will also consider how bird populations have changed, what species are currently “at-risk” and why, and how monitoring programs can be used in management and conservation. We will also review the many organizations that work on studying bird populations.