Important Bird Areas of Alaska, v3

Effective seabird conservation requires management of key locations for nesting, foraging, and migration. The identification of critical marine bird colonies and pelagic concentration areas has a varied history with many definitions applied. Important Bird Areas (IBAs) are based on an established program that uses standardized criteria to identify essential habitats, which are areas that hold a significant proportion of the population of one or more bird species. BirdLife International, in partnership with the National Audubon Society, developed standardized criteria defining Important Bird Areas, establishing a global “currency” for bird conservation. To qualify as a globally significant IBA, a proposed site must hold a significant number of a globally threatened species, or a significant percentage of a global population, as evidenced by documented, repeated observation of substantial congregations in an area. 

For an overview of the methods used to identify IBAs see the poster presented at the 2014 Alaska Bird Conference. For details on our marine IBAs see the paper published in Biological Conservation “Identifying marine Important Bird Areas Using At-sea Survey Data.” For more information on colony IBAs, see the 2012 marine IBA report. More information on any of this is available upon request.

Some of these sites are listed as 'potentially global,' until the national review committee has an opportunity to officially designate these as global. Note also that the site profiles and reports that the file attributes link to are out of date. Both of these items will be updated later in 2015.