The Important Bird Areas of Florida - National Audubon Society

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The Important Bird Areas of Florida: 2000–2002 – Pranty – 2-Jul-02 30Site selectionEight months into the site nomination period, several dozen sites had been nominated formally.Members of the IBA Executive Committee met for a day-long meeting at Tall Timbers Research Stationon 1 October 2000. (Jim Wilson, IBA Coordinator for Georgia, also attended). During that meeting, 62sites were discussed; eight of these were not accepted, and the remaining 54 sites were accepted as 32IBAs—the Executive Committee combined several sites when it made sense from biological and/orgeographical perspectives. Nominations continued to be received into mid-2002, and the Committeevoted several additional times. Because schedules of the Committee members precluded face-to-facemeetings, the IBA Coordinator prepared electronic copies of site nomination forms, and e-mailed these toCommittee members on a frequent basis. E-mail voting was “closed” when at least six Committeemembers had responded. Sites unanimously accepted by voting members of the Committee wereimmediately designated as IBAs, while sites for which all votes were negative were dropped from furtherconsideration. Sites that received mixed votes (i.e., some for and some against IBA designation) weredeferred until the Committee could discuss those nominations in detail.The first e-mail site-selection “meeting” was closed in March 2001, when 16 nominations werereviewed. Additional e-mail “meetings” were closed in April 2001 (17 sites), May 2001 (15 sites), andJuly 2001 (12 sites in two meetings). At the end of August 2001, a conference call among Committeemembers was held to discuss 11 nominations, including some deferred previously. E-mail selectionrounds were resumed in November 2001 (2 sites), January 2002 (6 sites), February 2002 (10 sites),March 2002 (6 sites), and May 2002 (4 sites). Finally, on 22 May 2002, during a second conference call,Committee members voted on 8 new sites and 11 sites deferred previously. This phone call nearlymarked the close of the site-selection period for the Florida IBA Program—a period originally anticipatedto end in November 2000! In early June 2002, an additional site was nominated by two Committeemembers, and this site was quickly accepted by the entire Committee.Of the 138 sites nominated formally as potential Important Bird Areas in Florida, 126 (91%)were accepted as 99 IBAs, while the remaining 11 sites (8%) were not accepted [an additional siteremains deferred pending additional data]. IBAs are distributed in 55 (80%) of Florida's 67 counties. Fourcounties (Brevard, Highlands, Osceola, and Volusia) each contain seven IBAs, while Lake, Pasco, andPolk counties each contain six. The sole nomination from St. Lucie County was not accepted as an IBA,and no nominations were submitted from 11 counties: Bradford, Calhoun, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Hamilton,Holmes, Jackson, Lafayette, Madison, Union, and Washington. As mentioned previously, all IBAs had tomeet the criteria of at least one of the four primary site-selection categories (pages 13–15); surprisingly,nearly half (47; 47%) of the IBAs met all four categories (Table 6; pages 34–37). Florida’s IBAs varyconsiderably in size, ranging from Pelican Shoal (less than 1 acre; 0.4 ha) to Everglades National Parkand associated wetlands (more than 1.5 million acres; 600,000 ha). All together, Florida's IBAsencompass over 10.3 million acres (4.1 million ha) of land and water, including about 26% of the state'sland area. These sites support 437 species of native birds, which represent 92% of the state’s acceptednative avifauna +(Bowman 2000, 2001).Some IBAs are a single land ownership—a national park or a state forest for example, while otherIBAs are composed of several ownerships that would not qualify individually (e.g., the Withlacoochee–Panasoffkee–Big Scrub IBA, pages 211–212). Most of Florida’s IBAs are a mix of public and privatelands, 44 are entirely publicly owned, and four IBAs (Bright Hour Watershed, Buck Island Ranch,Kanapaha Prairie, and Red Hills Ecosystem) are entirely in private ownership.[Need to mention/describe the tables]
The Important Bird Areas of Florida: 2000–2002 – Pranty – 2-Jul-02 31Table 2. Global, Continental, and National IBAs in Florida. [Need to explain what these are(including the G4 rankings) and need to add Continental and National IBAs, once these criteria have beenestablished].IBA Name County(ies) IBA RankingABC Islands Collier G4-fApalachicola and Tates Hell Forests Franklin, Leon, Liberty, and Wakulla G1Avon Park Air Force Range–Bombing Range Highlands and PolkG1RidgeBig Bend Ecosystem Dixie, Levy, and Taylor G4-fBrevard Scrub Ecosystem Brevard G1Cape Canaveral–Merritt Island Brevard and Volusia G1Central Pasco Pasco G1Disney Wilderness Preserve Osceola and Polk G1Eglin Air Force Base Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, and Walton G1Everglades National Park Miami-Dade and Monroe G1?, G4-dFisheating Creek Ecosystem Highlands and Glades G1Gulf Islands GEOpark Pasco and Pinellas G1Hillsborough Bay Hillsborough G4-c, G4-fKissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park Okeechobee and Osceola G1Lake Apopka Restoration Area Lake and Orange G4-bLake Wales Ridge Highlands, Lake, Osceola, and Polk G1Osceola Flatwoods and Prairies Osceola G1Ocala National Forest–Lake George Lake, Marion, and Putnam G1Osceola National Forest–Okenfenokee and Baker and ColumbiaG1Pinhook SwampsOscar Scherer State Park Sarasota G1St. Sebastian River State Buffer Preserve Brevard and Indian River G1Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge Collier G4-fUpper St. Johns River BasinBrevard, Indian River, Orange, G4-fOsceola, Seminole, and VolusiaWekiva–Ocala Greenway Lake and Volusia G1Withlacoochee–Panasoffkee–Big Scrub Citrus, Marion, and Sumter G1Table 3. The 13 most diverse IBAs in Florida, arranged in descending numeric order. All theseIBAs support a native diversity in excess of 250 species. *Includes the entire seashore (i.e., both theFlorida and Mississippi portions). A plus (+) denotes inland sites.IBA Name County(ies) # of SpeciesEverglades National Park Miami-Dade and Monroe 344Eglin Air Force Base Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, and Walton 324St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge Jefferson, Taylor, and Wakulla 320Cape Canaveral–Merritt Island Brevard and Volusia 313*Gulf Islands National Seashore Escambia, Okaloosa, and Santa Rosa 310+Lake Apopka Restoration Area Lake and Orange 304Lower Tampa Bay Hillsborough, Manatee, and Pinellas 302Dry Tortugas National Park Monroe 300Big Bend Ecosystem Dixie, Levy, and Taylor 277Gulf Islands GEOpark Pasco and Pinellas 268+Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park Alachua 266Chassahowitzka–Weekiwachee Citrus, Hernando, and Pasco 258+Northern Everglades Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe 252
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Page 3 and 4: The Important Bird Areas of Florida
Page 5 and 6: THE IMPORTANTBIRD AREAS OFFLORIDA:
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(25) *pickerelweed (Pontedaria cord
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“Southeastern” American Kestrel
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The Important Bird Areas of Florida - National Audubon Society

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