Bird Friendliness Index Pilot Project
Bird Friendliness Index Pilot Project
The Saskatchewan Stock Growers Foundation (SSGF) and Birds Canada are partnering to pilot an effort to conserve native grasslands and in turn, monitor its effect on the grassland bird populations. This 2 year project will bring forward the implementation of a dependable, scalable, and actionable biodiversity indicator that Birds Canada has created known as the Bird-friendliness Index (BFI). It allows an innovative outcome-based program referred to as Bird Banking in the Northern Great Plains.
This pilot project will be used to collaborate with privately owned working ranches and community/co-operative pasture groups that manage large areas of native grasslands and study the impact of conserving grasslands and the bird species that rely on the habitat created by grazing. Specific bird species being looked at are Baird’s Sparrow, Sprague’s Pipit, Chestnut-collared Longspur, Thick-billed Longspur and Larks Bunting. These birds evolved in grassland environments and need large intact areas with a mixture of short, medium and tall vegetation in order to thrive and repopulate. Birds Canada will introduce an Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions Program for the project area and then pilot an innovative outcome-based incentive program called Bird Banking.
By using an incentive-based program, it reward landowners who reach biodiversity outcomes through grazing. The Bird Friendliness Index is an outcome-based indicator that represents the impacts of land management and grazing on the bird community at the farm level. It is standardized and regionally contextualized to the surrounding landscape and then presented as a single, easily-communicated indicator. In turn, recognizing the hard work that ranchers and landowners are doing and supporting them in keeping these iconic grassland landscapes alive. A vital step in keeping this industry sustainable long term and honouring the history of ranching and land management.
Birds Canada has received overwhelmingly positive support on the BFI as a needed tool to enable outcome-based incentive programs and the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef has already adopted the BFI as an acceptable method to demonstrate biodiversity requirements for CRSB certification. The Saskatchewan Stock Growers Foundation is excited to move forward with this collaboration to further increase knowledge around grasslands and support the landowners stewarding them.
Who is Eligible
This project is open to private landowners, community pastures and grazing co-ops located within the Saskatchewan portion of the Missouri-Milk River Watershed region (blue area on the map).
How it Works
Landowners work with the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Foundation (SSGF) to sign a Habitat Management Agreement, Conservation Easement or Restoration Agreement on your operation. You are then eligible to enroll in the Bird-friendliness Index Incentives Pilot. Birds Canada will conduct bird surveys to represent all of the land you manage for your own operation to determine a Bird-friendliness Index Score for your operation. If your Bird-friendliness Index score is above 0.5, you are eligible to receive a per-acre payment annually for each year of participation in the 2-year Bird Bank pilot. Payments increase with higher Bird-friendliness Index. Below is an expected timeline for each year of the project.
What to Expect
This is a pilot of an innovative outcome-based approach to conservation in the Canadian Prairies. Your feedback will be critical to inform future programs like this to make sure that they are supporting you and your operation. We will be asking you throughout the project for your honest feedback. We also ask for your patience, we anticipate some bumps, delays, and unforeseen challenges along the way. Your collaboration is important to helping us work through these. It is important to note that you will not be compared directly to your neighbours nor to other participants in this program but rather to bird data that is collected throughout the ecoregion, on a variety of land uses to accurately represent your regional context
We are working to lay the groundwork for this type of approach to be implemented in variety of ways to lower risk and increase revenue for producers who are providing positive contributions to bird conservation. In this pilot phase however, the potential incentive is limited and please expect a modest rebate.
Since this is an outcome-based incentive program, it is possible that your operation may not score above 0.5 on the Bird-friendliness Index score and thus not qualify or receive a rebate in one or both years of the pilot. Please do not count on this rebate in your financial planning.
There are no penalties for scoring below 0.5 on the Bird-friendliness Index other than not qualifying to receive a rebate in the outcomes-based pilot. The Bird-friendliness Index score will not impact the payment agreed to with SSGF in your Habitat Management Agreement, Conservation Easement, or Restoration Agreement.
This is an innovative approach to grassland bird conservation within the prairies that rewards landowners for proper grazing management. We are excited to take on the project in partnership with Birds Canada.
For more information on the Bird-Friendliness Index click here
Thanks to our funders for making this work possible!
