NOTICE OF INTENT - National Park Service NCCN Landbird Monitoring 2015

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This Funding Announcement is not a request for applications. This announcement is to provide public notice of the National Park Service, intention to fund the following project activities without competition. NPS, working with government agencies, universities, and private not-for-profit organizations, has designed a process and developed protocols for monitoring long-term ecological integrity of national park ecosystems in the North Coast and Cascades Network (NCCN) of national parks of the Pacific Northwest. Breeding populations of landbirds have been identified as an important indicator of changes in ecological condition of these park units, and have been selected for long-term monitoring. The Institute of Bird Populations (IBP) has a lengthy history of working with the National Park Service to inventory avifauna in park units throughout the country. In 2000, the Institute began working directly with NCCN parks, first, by working with North Cascades National Park to summarize recommendations of an expert panel for developing a spatially extensive inventory and monitoring program in North Cascades National Park (Siegel and Kuntz, 2000). Subsequently, the NCCN adapted those recommendations and established a cooperative agreement with the Institute to conduct large-scale avian inventories in North Cascades, Olympic, Mount Rainier, and San Juan Islands. The Institute completed fieldwork for these avian inventories in 2004 (Siegel et al. 2002, 2004a, 2004b, 2005a, 2005b). Consequently, the Institute has become the leading expert in conducting avian inventories and monitoring programs in national parks of the NCCN. In October 2003, the Institute entered into a 3-year cooperative agreement with US Geological Survey to help the NCCN develop a Landbird Monitoring Plan that included a peer-reviewed monitoring protocol and a manual of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). A draft protocol and SOPs were written and peer-reviewed in summer/fall of 2006. Implementing this protocol enabled NCCN parks to track and understand how avian communities and their habitats respond to natural processes, to distinguish differences between human-induced disturbance effects and those caused by natural processes, to provide early detection of environmental impairment, and to provide park managers with comprehensive, scientifically-based information about the nature and status of selected biological resources occurring within park boundaries in a form that increases its accessibility and utility for making management decisions, for scientific research, and for educating the public. The National Park Service, North Cascades National Park, intends to award a Task Agreement (TA) to provide for avian studies based upon this announcement. This funding announcement is not a request for applications. See attached Notice of Intent NPS-NOI-NOCA-P15AS00061 for additional details.

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