Harnessing the Power of Citizen-Science:
IBP’s California Burrowing Owl Survey

Much of our work at The Institute for Bird Populations is based on the premise that a little thoughtful coordination can knit together the efforts of many disparate individuals and groups into something greater than the sum of its parts. This maxim is particularly true for monitoring bird populations, and in many cases participants do not need to be professional biologists to make important contributions. A case in point is the new paper published by IBP scientists Bob Wilkerson and Rodney Siegel in Bird Populations, IBP’s own peer-reviewed scientific journal.

IBP coordinated the efforts of 394 volunteer bird surveyors, who contributed over 6,400 hours of their time to count Burrowing Owls on 860 5km x 5km study plots across California. The volunteers documented the exact locations of 1,758 pairs of owls, and also produced important information about where Burrowing Owls are absent. IBP aggregated these survey results to estimate the size of regional and statewide Burrowing Owl populations, and compare those estimates with results from a similar study IBP coordinated in the early 1990s.

Results from the survey have now been published in:

Wilkerson, R. L., and R. B. Siegel. 2010. Assessing changes in the distribution and abundance of Burrowing Owls in California, 1993-2007. Bird Populations 10:1-36. Download (large pdf - please be patient)

Wilkerson, R. L., and R. B. Siegel. 2011. Distribution and abundance of Western Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia hypugaea) in southeastern California. The Southwestern Naturalist 56:378-384. Download

We thank all of the volunteer surveyors, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, California Department of Fish and Game, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company for providing funding to coordinate the project.