New Zealand Bird Atlas: the final year
Dan Burgin1, Samantha Ray1 and Keegan Miskimmin1
1 Wildlife Management International Limited, PO Box 607, Blenheim, 7240 New Zealand (nzbirdatlas@wmil.co.nz, dan@wmil.co.nz, samantha@wmil.co.nz, keegan@wmil.co.nz)
The New Zealand Bird Atlas is entering the final year of the five-year data collection period. An estimated $2.4 million worth of volunteer effort has gone into the project so far, from the over 1350 Atlasers who have contributed over 320,000 checklists to the Atlas eBird portal documenting 294 species. To date just 154 of the 3232 Atlas grid squares are still without data, and there is plenty of birding to be done in under-surveyed areas across the country. An update will be provided on how this nationally significant project is progressing, with key updates for the membership and Atlas community provided amongst some initial findings, and more. All of this is to hopefully inspire the Birds New Zealand membership and Atlas community to continue to work together to meet the Atlas project’s objectives across the country over the final 12 months. Importantly, we wish to ensure participants observations, and therefore the dataset, are as scientifically valuable as possible to ensure they have lasting positive impacts on bird conservation and research in Aotearoa New Zealand, at a variety of temporal and spatial scales.