Burchfield Collaborates: Birds On The Niagara 2024

Free

Doors Open 11 am. 

Each Presentation will last about 45 minutes with time for brief breaks in-between.
 
 
 
11:00 am- Noon
Birding for Land Justice: Birds, Tonawanda Seneca Nation, and STAMP 
PRESENTER:Catherine Landis  ​
This presentation addresses a major conservation issue brewing in Genesee County, one that has land justice ramifications as well. The Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing Campus, aka STAMP, threatens the last remaining chunk of contiguous large habitat in Western NY. This mega-industrial site is planned right along the border with the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, a sovereign entity who resist the development. I will provide background and update on STAMP related to the Nation and conservation issues, focusing on birds.  Finally, I will discuss more appropriate visions for the site, along with ways citizens can get involved to protect this land. Birders especially can apply their skills and enjoyment of birding, to contribute data that supports land justice in sensitive and contested areas such as around STAMP.  

Catherine Landis is a plant ecologist, historical ecologist and avid birder. She earned her Masters and doctorate in ecology at SUNY ESF, where she currently works as Science Advisor for the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.

Noon-1:00 PM
30 x 30 in Western New York
Presenter: Western New York Environmental Alliance (WNYEA)
Last November, the Western New York Environmental Alliance began a series of programs on how our local communities can participate in both understanding the goals of 30 x 30, and how we can all participate in creating this critical climate change and biodiversity initiative- "The protection of 30% of Earth's Lands and Waters by the year 2030."  The WNYEA is leading a local, statewide, and bioregional discussion about this topic.  This discussion will help to focus on definitions and characterizations about permanantly preserve land, water and atmospheric contexts.  This is an important update for this project.

1:00-2:00 PM
Waterfowl of the Winter Niagara 
PRESENTER: Connie Adams, New York State DEC Wildlife Biologist
Learn about the many species of birds on the Niagara River including ducks, geese, swans, colonial waterbirds, the Common Tern, and their conditions and threats in 2024.
 
2:00- 3:00 PM
The Lessons of Jocotoco
PRESENTER: Jajean Rose Burney Jocotoco Conservation Foundation
This presentation will make the links between international conservation strategies, hemispheric conservation strategies, and the Niagara Bioregion conservation strategies and priorities.
Jocotoco Conservation Foundation, an Ecuadorian conservation organization that protects and restores habitat for wildlife in the Andes, Amazon, Chocó, and the Galapagos. Jocotoco has 15 reserves covering nearly 80,000 acres. Many of those reserves include lodges for visiting birdwatchers. Jocotoco recently helped establish and create a management plan for a new 23,000-square mile marine reserve connecting the Galapagos with Cocos Island in Costa Rica. Our reserves protect habitat for 10% of all bird species globally, including iconic birds like the Andean Condor, Great Green Macaw, and several of Darwin's finches, along with rare and recently discovered birds such as the El Oro Parakeet, Blue-throated Hillstar, and our namesake, the Jocotoco Antpitta.
 
Jajean Rose Burney is a Birds on the Niagara founder, and was the Keynote Speaker for the First Birds Niagara Festival seven years ago. He has made presentations at all of the previous BON festivals on topics ranging from the Niagara River Corridor Globally Significant Bird Area, the Niagara River RAMSAR designation, and the work of the Western New York Land Conservancy. 
After more than a decade at the Western New York Land Conservancy, Jajean joined Jocotoco in December of 2023, and is the Director of Jocotoco US. 

3:00-4:00 pm
The Recovery of the Kirtland's Warbler in Ontario- Restoring a Lost Ecological Community
PRESENTER: David Agro 
Kirtland's Warbler is a globally threatened songbird. While the prime breeding range is in the sandy soils of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Scattered records have indicated a presence as a historic breeder in Ontario, although most suitable habitat in the province was cleared with agricultural expansion in the late 1800s. The effects of destructive agricultural practises on sandy soils became most acute in the dry period of the 1930s resulting in large scale plantings of Scotch and Red Pines where ever sandy soils occurred significantly reducing available habitat.  Nonetheless, in the past twenty years two small breeding populations have been located in central Ontario and others might be possible.
 
A pilot plan to restore 100 ha of breeding habitat in Simcoe County was initiated in 2016. The sites are a former railway loading spur and former Christmas Tree farm that had been replanted with native species to try to replicate natural communities that are known to be locally present. In 2022 up to six males Kirtland's Warblers were attracted to one of the sites. With the initial success of this effort, a broader program was developed working with local governments, land trusts and local partners and the American Bird Conservancy to expand the effort over a wider area. While the effort focuses on the Kirtland’s Warbler, this is an innovative collaborative cross border conservation initiative that will benefit many other threatened species that occur on specialized pine oak communities associated with sandy soils of the lower Great Lakes.

​David J. Agro is an award winning architect and conservationist based in Toronto whose work was based in a long-term interest in environment, ecology and sustainable design. David is founding member and past President of the Jocotoco Foundation. David was also the founding president of Jocotours, an associated business which runs five ecolodges and two interpretive centres on six of Jocotoco’s reserves to generate income to provide interpretive/educational experiences and to cover conservation operations costs. At home in Canada, David’s efforts in conservation have included supporting the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Long Point Basin Land Trust in Norfolk County, Ontario, Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust, and the rare Charitable Research Reserve in Cambridge, Ontario and a recent project to expand the breeding population of Kirtland’s Warbler in Ontario.

For the past 17 years, David and his wife have been restoring a former 95 acre tobacco farm in Norfolk County, Ontario to Black Oak Savanna / Prairie which is now one of the most diverse restored prairie / meadow sites in southern Ontario with over 200 native plant species. Numerous rare and endangered animal and insect species have returned to the site, which is part of a larger mosaic of 5000 acres of protected land owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Long Point Basin Land Trust.

4:00 PM- 5:00 PM
Western New York Wildway
PRESENTER:Marcus Rosten Western New York Land Conservancy Western New York Wildway Director

As landscape fragmentation isolates wildlife on small islands of habitat without the ability to migrate, forage, or breed, species are unable to survive in a changing climate. The Western New York Wildway is a landscape-scale conservation initiative led by the Western New York Land Conservancy, to create a network of protected cores and corridors from the Allegheny Plateau of Appalachia to the Great Lakes and beyond. With its connection to the larger Eastern Wildway, the WNY Wildway will allow plants and animals to safely roam across the land as they once did, to expand their ranges in order to ensure their survival as the climate changes, and allow wildlife that have disappeared from our region to return home. 

​Marcus Rosten is a naturalist working to protect, connect, and restore the largest remaining tracts of wildlife habitat in Western New York. Since graduating from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, he has served as an interpretive park ranger in our national parks and forests, led environmental education and stewardship programs with non-profit organizations, and worked as a fish and wildlife technician, conducting wildlife surveys and managing habitats for state and federal agencies. Marcus is a 2020 30 Under 30 Awardee from the North American Association for Environmental Education and has been featured nationally in Scholastic News, Nike Journal, BirdNote, and on PBS Nature.

5:00-6:30 pm
BREAK 

DOORS OPEN : 6:15PM  

EVENING SESSION  

Keynote and Book Signing with Author and Illustrator David Sibley  

SOLD OUT

Due to popular demand, an overflow Simulcast will be available. Tickets and information in the link below. 

Overflow Simulcast & Book Signing Tickets

SOLD OUT 

In the same way that poetry conveys rich meaning in just a few words, the illustrations in a field guide need to give maximum information in minimum space. Tracing his own artistic development through sketches and paintings, David discusses the unique requirements and challenges of illustrating for a field guide. 

Talking Leaves Bookstore will be present with copies of Sibley's book for purchase. 

David Allen Sibley is the author and illustrator of the series of successful guides to nature that bear his name, including the New York Times bestseller The Sibley Guide to Birds. He has contributed art and articles to Smithsonian, Science, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Birding, BirdWatching, and North American Birds, and wrote and illustrated a syndicated column for The New York Times.