Thank you to Hannah Nikonow (Intermountain West Joint Venture) for creating this incredible video about Migratory Bird Joint Ventures! Can you spot the common eiders?
Migratory Bird Joint Ventures are cooperative partnerships that work to conserve habitat for the benefit of birds, other wildlife, and people. Over their forty-year history, Joint Ventures have worked with over 5,700 non-governmental organizations, local, state, and federal agencies, private landowners, Tribes, corporations, universities, and other partners. By working together, Joint Ventures have conserved over 33 million acres of habitat across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. They have also enabled cutting-edge scientific research, strategic communications and outreach, and effective planning and resource management actions.
Habitat-based Joint Ventures each address the bird habitat conservation issues found within their geographic area.
Species-based Joint Ventures advance the scientific knowledge needed to manage populations of specific birds.
There are currently 22 Habitat Joint Ventures plus three Species Joint Ventures, including the Sea Duck Joint Venture. In the early 1990s, the populations of several North American sea duck species were declining for unknown reasons, prompting increased concern. Scientists noted that even basic biological information was lacking for most sea duck species. The Sea Duck Joint Venture was formally established in 1999 as a mechanism to address these information gaps.
Filling some information gaps on the basic biology of sea ducks is still necessary, but the Sea Duck Joint Venture’s focus is evolving to address data needs explicitly linked to conservation and management decisions, including the human dimensions aspect of conservation.
Common goldeneye at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Tom Koerner (USFWS).
We look forward to another forty years of collaborating with our partners to conserve North American sea ducks. You can learn about other Migratory Bird Joint Ventures at mbjv.org.
