The Fish and Wildlife Information Exchange Division (FWIE) of the Conservation Management Institute (CMI) recently collaborated with the US Forest Service (USFS) in upgrading their R8 Bird Database. R8Bird was developed by the USFS, Southern Region, to support Forest monitoring efforts and enhance land management planning that emphasized migratory and resident land birds. In 1996, Region 8 implemented the Southern National Forests Migratory and Resident Land bird Conservation Strategy to provide and sustain habitats for neotropical migratory birds, temperate migratory birds, and resident birds. A comprehensive Forest monitoring program was established region-wide. Standardized bird monitoring procedures were developed for measuring the success in achieving population and habitat objectives at the District, Forest, and Regional levels.

An important part of the monitoring program was assuring that the information was maintained in a standardized format. The conservation strategy indicated a need to implement a system (R8Bird) for managing the information on forest birds as part of the Wildlife, Fisheries, and Botany Resource Inventory Tracking and Analysis Applications. R8Bird was designed as a database for housing the population and habitat monitoring data for use in Forest Land and Resource Management Plans. The system will maintain data collection standards established in the conservation strategy.

FWIE restructured the design and updated of the R8 Bird to support complex reporting, querying and data entry components of the system used at the District, Forest and Supervisory level. FWIE staff standardized various point count databases from 14 forests into a workable format to integrate into the new R8 Bird. CMI assisted the national forests with the summary, analysis, and reporting using previous and current avian monitoring data. Forests in the Region now have one standard database that can be used by all Forest Service staff.