(IVAR) - Final Report - Strategic Environmental Research and ...

eal time, avian radars and can detect and track many more birds (Section 6.2.1.5). A single
biologist using an avian radar system can survey an area more completely and document its data
for a lower cost than multiple biologists that would be used if an avian radar system were
unavailable (see Section 6.6.1.1). This latter approach is the one that is currently used as the
standard protocol. Thus, a more productive approach will be to use both approaches because
they are complementary: use avian radars for continuous routine surveillance sampling and visual
observers to fill in the gaps where the radars are not effective (e.g., in forested areas, or where
species identifications are required). Using the radars for routine sampling would also free up
the wildlife biologists and BASH managers to concentrate on interpreting the radar data and
investigating the patterns of activity those data yield.
In Section 6.6.1.1 we argued that an avian radar system costs much less ($20/hour vs. $100/hour)
and can detect many more birds than a human observer expending the same level of effort. These
arguments notwithstanding, the more likely scenario is to use the avian radar to augment rather
than to replace field observations by the wildlife biologist. If we assume that the biologist would
still spend the requisite 10 hours/week in the field observing birds, albeit differently because the
radar is now performing continuous real-time surveillance of the bird populations, then the true
cost of monitoring bird activity at a facility over a five-year period would be the aggregate cost of
the avian radar system ($640k, Table 7-4) and the portion of the biologist’s time devoted field
observations ($260K, p. 258).
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