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Join us for a night of fun!!
 Join BRI on Tuesday, March 31, anytime between 5pm-9pm for a benefit night at Flatbread Company, 72 Commercial Street in Portland. Bring friends, eat pizza and meet the staff. A portion of the night's proceeds go to BRI. We hope to have the eaglecam live-streaming, a raffle for some gorgeous wildlife photos and some hard-to-come-by BRI paraphernalia.
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BRI Webcam update
BioDiversity Research Institute has expanded its innovative wildlife education program with the release of two new webcams. The peregrine falcon and bald eagle webcams join BRI's already popular eagle, loon, osprey, and finch cams. Recent developments also allow BRI webcam viewers to enjoy online video blogs, feature videos, and a social networking site dedicated to discussing the webcams and wildlife science.
March is the month. If all goes well, recent activity suggests that we may have birds laying eggs at each of our webcam sites this month. So keep checking the cams!!
Check out the latest at:
Staff photo: adult bald eagles
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BRI returns to Belize
In January, BRI researchers returned to Belize to strengthen and expand collaborative efforts to evaluate mercury exposure in coastal, riverine and terrestial ecosystems. Working alongside representatives from several local and international conservation organizations, BRI surveyed and live sampled songbirds, bats, and tuba, a popular consumer fish species found throughout the country.
BRI in Belize
Staff photo: Lee Attix (BRI) live sampling a Brown Jay with David Tzul (middle) and Wilber Martinez (left) from Birds without Borders-Aves Sin Fronteras
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Mercury in New York Eagles
A recent study prepared by BRI and the NY Department of Conservation and supported by a grant from the Nature Conservancy revealed elevated mercury levels in eagles nesting in the Catskill region of New York. One-third of adult eagles in the Catskill region and a quarter of those sampled statewide had accumulated mercury in their bodies to levels associated with
harmful effects in other fish-eating
birds such as common loons. For more about the eagles of New York, go to:
New York Eagles
Photo by Chris DeSorbo, BRI- bald eagle talons
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Greetings!
Often I feel we are on the hunt for something we really do not want to find. BioDiversity Research Institute biologists regularly assess ecosystem health by visiting new and sometimes remote sites across the Americas. Whether the assessment is for determining mercury levels in bald eagles or for the presence of avian influenza in common eiders, an outcome of nothing is always the favored one. Our assessment net is ever expanding to include novel indicators like wolf spiders and cave bats, new places such as in the jungles of Belize, or new environmental health issues caused by ever-increasing anthropogenic stressors. The first line of understanding - and defense for our own health - is following the lives of wild animals that share our common world. Our webcams are a fascinating approach toward conducting such surveillance. I invite you to enter the wild and personal world of eagles, falcons and loons, and hopefully it will compel you to cast your own net of environmental inquiry.
- David Evers, Executive Director
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Great Lakes Mercury Workshop
In November 2008, BRI joined with the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse to host the first of two binational workshops to coordinate mercury research and analysis efforts in the Great Lakes region. Sponsored by the Great Lakes Atmospheric Deposition Program (GLAD), the workshop brought together 53 participants to share research efforts and develop common project goals. To read more about the workshop and mercury in the Great Lakes region, visit:
Great Lakes
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Assessing Cape May Raptors
 In October, BRI biologists Chris Desorbo and Chris Niven worked with long-time raptor biologist Al Hinde in Cape May, NJ on the Cape May Raptor Banding Project. For over two decades, this project has contributed to raptor conservation by banding hundreds of hawks in Cape May. In 2008, BRI added a new twist to the project by sampling captured raptors for contaminant and other analyses. For more about these efforts, visit:
Cape May Raptors
Staff photo: Chris DeSorbo (BRI) holding a Cooper's hawk |
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Avian Influenza Surveillance
BRI biologists, led by Lucas Savoy, have been sampling waterfowl wintering at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in Massachusetts as part of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service program to expand efforts to detect avian influenza in the Atlantic Flyway. The recent emergence and spread of a highly pathogenic avian influenza subtype in Asia and its subsequent spread to Europe and Africa has elevated concerns about potential expansion of this virus to North America. For more about avian influenza and BRI's work, go to:
Staff photo: common eider male |
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Twenty five years of Loon Conservation
 BioDiversity Research Institute has been researching loons for 25 years - an effort that has led to many behavioral, demographic, and conservation-oriented discoveries. Nearly all of BRI's findings are based on the 1989 breakthrough of a safe, nocturnally-based capture technique that has resulted in over 3,000 loons uniquely color-banded and sampled for body burdens of mercury. The Rangeley Lakes Region of Maine now comprises one of the best studied common loon breeding populations in North America. Our long-term monitoring efforts of nearly 200 territorial pairs continue to reveal secrets of the loon's life - necessary for its survival in an increasingly human-dominated world (see BRI Loon Program).
The newly formed International Center for Loon Conservation provides a home for a growing network of participants and working groups that strive for scientifically-bound decisions that are in the best interest of self-sustaining loon populations (ICLC homepage).
Photo by Ginger Gumm & Dan Poleschook: common loon in winter
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