Grupo Jaragua scientists are joining their colleagues at Quita Espuela Foundation to back an initiative aimed at improving the wintering habitat for the rare Bicknell Thrush songbird. The bird migrates from coastal forest sites in northeastern US and Canada to forest areas in the Dominican Republic.
The Bicknell’s Thrush Habitat Protection Fund at the Adirondack Community Trust has awarded a US$5,000 grant to Grupo Jaragua, which works mainly in the southwest. The biologists will study the thrush in forested mountains on the Dominican Republic’s border with Haiti. The grant recognizes a need to protect the songbird across its entire range, particularly in its threatened winter destinations.
“The Bicknell’s Thrush has two homes n one here in North America and the other in the Caribbean Basin,” said Chris Rimmer, executive director of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, a research group working to conserve the thrush. “Our efforts to protect this vulnerable songbird can’t stop at the water’s edge. We need to concentrate our work where the threats are most severe and imminent.”
Brown, speckled, and reclusive, Bicknell’s Thrush is one of North America’s rarest nesting songbirds and faces threats from charcoal production and unsustainable agriculture and forestry practices in the Caribbean, as well as climate change, mercury contamination and habitat loss in North America.
Grupo Jaragua, a non-profit conservation group based in the Dominican Republic, will use the grant to search for Bicknell’s Thrushes, map their habitat, and assess conservation threats in the southern Sierra de Bahoruco, a crucial wintering area for the songbird.
Sixto Inchaustegui, a senior scientist with Grupo Jaragua, said the grant would allow his team to establish an essential local presence in a forest under heavy pressure from illegal agricultural expansion and charcoal production. “By better understanding Bicknell’s Thrush and its conservation needs,” he said, “Jaragua and our partners will more effectively tackle pressing issues that threaten all biodiversity in this sensitive region.”
See more at www.bicknellsthrush.org/conservation
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