Dear Ospreyers,

On November 16th Audubon Maryland-DC recognized Maryland's newest Important Bird Area (IBA), Chino Farms. Chino Farms was identified as an Important Bird Area because it hosts significant populations of two rapidly declining grassland bird species, Northern Bobwhite and Grasshopper Sparrow, as well as an unusually diverse and numerous community of shrubland birds.  This 5630-acre site is the largest conservation easement in Maryland and is a model of habitat restoration. Buffer plantings around field edges have allowed bobwhite populations to increase, and the experimental grassland restoration project designed by Doug Gill of the University of Maryland-College Park to attract grassland birds has been a great success - Grasshopper Sparrows colonized the 230-acre grassland in its first year and quickly increased to average 80 breeding pairs since 2001.

You can learn more about Audubon's IBA Program at our website <http://www.audubonmddc.org/SciCon_IBAs.html> 
The Chino Farms IBA dedication ceremony was written up in the Kent News and Easton Star Democrat (see article below).

Dave

David Curson, PhD
Director of Bird Conservation,
Audubon MD-DC,
2437 Eastern Avenue,
Baltimore  MD  21224
Tel: (410) 558 2473
E-mail: 


National Audubon Society designates site as bird area
By MELISSA MCINTIRE
Special from The Kent News
November 28, 2006 
 <http://stardem.com/printarticle.asp?article=22269> <<ole0.bmp>>  <http://stardem.com/printarticle.asp?article=22269>  	
CHESTERTOWN - If the northern bobwhite and the grasshopper sparrow could talk they'd sing the praises of Grasslands Plantation, formerly Chino Farms.
For more than 12 years, the plantation has been part of a habitat restoration and land management project. The project has helped preserve the grassy meadows that the bobwhites and sparrows call home.
On Thursday, the National Audubon Society recognized Grasslands Plantation as an important bird area, or IBA. Also recognized were landowner Henry Sears; Doug Gil, researcher and professor at the University of Maryland; James Gruber, head of bird banding at the plantation; Evan Miles, farm manager; and Peter Jayne, associate director of regional wildlife and heritage for the Department of Natural Resources.
IBAs are sites that provide nesting areas, wintering grounds or crucial migration stopovers for one or more bird species.
What makes the Grasslands Plantation so special is that it is one of a few sites that has been keeping data on the birds that call the plantation home.
"Here is a site with a good team committed to preservation. They have everything very well in hand here," said David Curson, director of bird conservation for Audubon Maryland-DC. "It's a very worrying trend that many bird populations are declining because of habitat degradation because of development. This (project) is a preventative method to keep birds off of the endangered species list, it's a pre-emptive approach to conservation."
Both the northern bobwhite and the grasshopper sparrow are suffering a decrease in population across the country, he said, but they are doing very well at the plantation, which has been encouraging.
"It takes great vision to implement programs that help birds on the ground. It takes great vision on the part of the landowner to have a conservation plan like this," Curson said.
He said that the Audubon Society divides the IBAs into three areas; rare or declining, which means the birds and their habitat is threatened; dense congregation, birds tend to gather in large groups in one place, like water fowl; and habitat specific, birds dependent on a specific habitat to survive. Most grassland birds fall under the habitat specific group.
Sears said the preservation that the plantation is praised for would not have been possible without help from others.
"There's lots of partnerships here from the University of Maryland and the DNR and the managers. ... None of this would've happened had it not been for those partnerships," he said during his acceptance speech. "It's been a crawl, walk, run."
Jayne said one of the best things about the project is what he has learned.
"When I came here as a new quail biologist I was not familiar with farming practices ... but as a result of working with Chino I am better than I was when I walked on to this farm 14 years ago," the DNR biologist said.
He said that he has been able to take what he's learned across the state and apply it to different preservation projects.
"I think they're (Grasslands Plantation) a good model for what farming should look like in the Chesapeake Bay watershed."
Gil, who has been leading the research team from the University of Maryland, said the project was quite a challenge, but what it has shown is that "you can take human-impacted land and turn it into a wildlife refuge. Biology is unbelievably resilient, things are recoverable."
Grasslands Plantation is 6,000 acres stretching from Route 213 to Route 301 in Queen Anne's County. It is the largest single property ever put under protected easement in the state's history.