February 2008

TOPIC:  Birds and Communication Towers—What’s happening in Dane County?

SPEAKER:  Emilie Travis

WHEN:  Tuesday, February 19

TIME:  7:00 pm Refreshments
TIME:  7:30 pm Program

WHERE:  Auditorium
UW Arboretum

PARKING:  Free parking at the Arboretum

PRE-MEETING DINNER:  You are invited to join Madison Audubon board members and friends at the pre-program dinner with our speaker beginning at 5:15.

Paisan's 131 West Wilson Street

QUESTIONS?:  Please call the MAS office at (608)255-2473.

Over the past few years there have been several reports of birds killed in collisions with communication towers in and around Madison. But how significant is the threat to migrating birds? Until recently we lacked the data to get at the heart of the question. Join us to find out what Emilie Travis has learned in her research in Dane County

Travis' research looked at tower height, migration intensity, season, and placement of towers in the landscape to see how these factors affected bird mortality at her sampled towers. During spring 2007, with the help of 25-30 volunteers, she performed daily mortality searches at each of 11 FCC registered towers in the county during peak spring (April 21-June 1) and fall (August 25-October 5) migrations. Travis will report on how the height of towers affected mortality last year. She will also discuss how radar data can be used to provide relative migration densities and then demonstrate the correlation between migration density and mortality events from spring and fall 2007. Her findings may guide us in shaping future tower management in support of bird conservation and may provide cost-effective mitigation strategies to reduce tower mortalities at existing towers. Folks interested in volunteering on the project in 2008 are encouraged to come learn more details.

Emilie Travis is a Masters candidate working under the direction of Dr. David Drake at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She grew up in Central New Jersey and escaped rather quickly to New England, where she obtained her B.S. in wildlife biology and minor in Forestry at the University of Vermont. While in Vermont she assisted on graduate projects including work with double-crested cormorants and Indiana bats and also studied in the Andes of Ecuador where she helped to initiate an amphibian monitoring program. Upon graduation from UVM, she took field tech jobs including an amphibian research monitoring project in the Greater Yellowstone region and returned to the east coast to assist in passerine migrant research in the shrublands of northeastern Pennsylvania.