Tracking population recovery: evaluating progress toward the Partners in Flight Landbird Conservation Plan 2016 objectives

Measurable objectives are a foundation of adaptive conservation planning. The Partners In Flight (PIF) Landbird Conservation Plan (2016) established short- and longer-term population trend objectives for 86 bird species considered to be of high conservation concern in Canada and the continental United States (PIF “Watch List” species). We evaluated progress toward achieving these objectives for 61 species with sufficient data to model. We used population trajectory estimates from broad-scale monitoring to project recent population trends forward in time and to compare against the short- (10-year) and longer-term (30-year) PIF objectives to assess whether trends are tracking toward achieving these objectives. Our approach propagates the uncertainty of the estimated population trajectories derived from various data sources into the projected trends. We built an R package (birdtrends) that provides a streamlined, reproducible and customizable workflow for estimating how trend projections compare to measurable objectives. Trend projections appear likely to meet the short-term trend objectives for 22 species, while 28 species appear likely to miss their short-term objectives. Trajectories for the remaining 11 species included projections with a wide distribution over both positive and negative outcomes and thus were considered uncertain. Trend projections over the longer-term were highly variable for most species, resulting in uncertainty in longer-term assessments. Thus it appears that for some species there has been progress toward achieving short-term PIF population trend objectives but more conservation investment, effort and collaboration is likely required to achieve short- and longer-term objectives for most species.