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Project Tanager participants followed a simple but rigorously tested protocol
that included selecting suitable study sites,
visiting these sites at least twice during the
breeding season to search for tanagers and look
for evidence of breeding, measuring a suite of habitat variables, and returning data to
Cornell for analysis. Many land managers contributed
to the project as active participants and site
coordinators, helping volunteers with landscape measurements, obtaining maps, or
gaining access to study sites. The management
guidelines presented here are a direct result of
this massive study.
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Studying the rangewide effects of landscape features and habitat fragmentation
on widespread species such as Scarlet Tanagers is not a simple task. In fact, no single researcher
or team of researchers could adequately cover enough territory during a short breeding
season to conduct such a study. For this reason,
the Cornell Lab of Ornithology developed
Project Tanager, a partnership between amateur
birders and professional scientists, with support from
the National Science Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. By employing
this volunteer, citizen-scientist workforce,
Cornell researchers could be "everywhere at
once." From 1993 to 1996, more than 1,000
trained volunteers studied tanagers at more than
2,000 study sites across North America—amassing perhaps the largest dataset ever collected
on forest fragmentation and birds.
