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The Hawaiian Forest Bird Survey (1976-1982) began shortly after
passage of the Endangered Species Act. Because half the endangered
birds in the United States were Hawaiian endemic species, U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service biologists were dispatched there with
instructions to come up with a recovery plan that would save species
hovering on the verge of extinction and secure a continued existence
for those that were threatened. What the biologists encountered was a
dearth of information about all but a few species. How large were
populations of the endangered birds? Where were they located? No
information was available. Hence, the HFBS was organized to answer
those basic questions. It began on the Big Island of Hawaii in June of
1976 and ended on Kauai in August of 1982. In the interim, teams of up
to 25 observers in a year surveyed all the forested regions of the
main Hawaiian Islands: Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Oahu, and
Kauai. The performed over 10,000 point counts, and logged over 100,000
detected birds. Observers have stopped for eight minutes at stations
located every 100 meters along transects spaced 2,000 meters apart. In
each count, they record all the birds they hear and/or see. These
counts are brought to the statistician, whose job is to determine how
many birds of each species the observers missed! The current talk
will give an overview of the HFBS, its goals, its execution, and its
results. Focus centers on the job of counting the birds that the
observers left uncounted.
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