Bird Friendliness Index Incentive Program
Bird Friendliness Index Incentive Program
The Saskatchewan Stock Growers Foundation (SSGF) and Birds Canada are partnering for an effort to conserve native grasslands and in turn, monitor its effect on the grassland bird populations. This partnership 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).
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
Producers who are located within the coloured areas below are eligible for this program.This program 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.
How it Works
1)Sign a 5-year Bird-friendliness Incentive Program Agreement with Saskatchewan Stock Growers Foundation. This lays out the terms and conditions of the BFI Incentive Program.
2)Sign a Right of Entry and Data Sharing Agreement with Birds Canada, this grants Birds Canada access to do the bird surveys and governs how Birds Canada stores and shares data.
3)Sign a Bird-Friendliness Index Verification Agreement with Birds Canada. This lays out the terms and conditions to keep a BFI score in good standing so that it can be used within the BFI Incentive Program.
4)In the first year you participate in the BFI Incentive Program, Birds Canada will come out and do bird surveys between May 28th and July 7th. Birds Canada will contact you prior to coming out to coordinate those bird surveys.
5)Birds Canada will use the bird data we collected to determine a BFI Score for the farm/ranch. You will receive your BFI score by November 1st each year.
6)You’ll receive an incentive payment from SSGF based on your BFI score. See the payment amounts below.
What’s the ‘surrounding landscape’ that the bird community on my farm/ranch is being compared to determine my BFI score?
The ecoregion that your operation lies within (i.e. Cypress Uplands, Mixed Grassland, Moist Mixed Grassland, Aspen Parkland). 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.
For example: ABC Farms is just outside of Weyburn. Their ‘surrounding landscape’ or ‘regional context’ is the entirety of the Moist Mixed Grassland Ecoregion in Saskatchewan.
Do I need to include land that I rent or lease?
Yes. BFI is calculated at a whole-farm/ranch level. Participants must disclose all the lands that they have control over in some manner. This includes owned land, crown lease land, private rented/leased land, private land rented/leased out to someone else, etc. If there are lands that you have some manner of control over but you want excluded from the program, we can discuss their exclusion.
Will Birds Canada need to do bird surveys on my farm/ranch every year?
It depends on two things. First your Bird-friendliness Index Score and changes made to your land base/use.
Here’s the schedule of how often we will come back to do bird surveys based on your initial/latest BFI score:
For changes to land base/use, each year you’ll submit an update to Birds Canada letting them know if you bought/sold land, rented more land etc. or if you made land use changes like establishing or converting perennial cover. If you didn’t then we default to the schedule based on your BFI latest BFI. If there were changes, Birds Canada will evaluate and decide if a new bird survey is needed sooner than the next regularly scheduled bird survey.
If you received a BFI score below 0.5, you may request Birds Canada to come back to do bird surveys, and Birds Canada will consider these requests based on a number of factors including changes to land management, land use, habitat, etc.
How does Birds Canada determine where they are going to do bird surveys on my farm/ranch?
Survey points are laid on quarters/sections in a regular grid pattern on each land parcel you manage (4 points on a quarter, 16 points on a section). If you manage less than 6 sections, we will conduct bird surveys on all of the parcels you manage. If you manage 6 sections or more, we survey a portion of your total land base, randomly selecting parcels to survey.
How are the bird surveys conducted?
The bird surveys are conducted on foot, using a combination of two method: ‘Point Counts’ and ‘Recorders’. Point counts are where very early in the morning, Birds Canada staff listen and watch for birds at a survey point. Recorders are where Birds Canada staff install recording devices at a survey point for a period of time (usually less than a week) and then then Birds Canada staff listen to all the birds on the recording.
These surveys are done once a summer for each point scheduled for surveys, so we will be on your farm or ranch a total of 1-4 days each time we come to do surveys.
If you are interested in this program or have questions, please contact us.