Natchez Trace Parkway takes part in international bird census
The Audubon Christmas Bird Count has been running for over 120 years tracking bird populations through volunteer efforts.
NATCHEZ TRACE PARKWAY, Miss. (WCBI) – It was a frigid day at the Chickasaw Village site on the Natchez Trace Parkway as Amber Debardelaben, an interpretation and education park ranger at the Natchez Trace Parkway prepared for the Bird Count and Shoot.
“It’s an awesome way to be a scientist without having to actually be a scientist and go to school for it and everything but still help out,” DeBardelaben said.
The event taught attendees about native and migratory birds, as well as how to photograph them.
But the impact of their work is not just local.
It is part of a volunteer research project, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, that spans over a century and has participants in the United States, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands.
“It’s actually the longest-running citizen science survey in the world,” DeBardelaben said. “So basically about 100 years ago during the age of extinction, as they call it, there was this tradition where people would go out and hunt animals and birds the day after Christmas. They called it the side hunt and it was like, go out and kill as many things as you can, come back and see who wins. And a guy named Frank Chapman, who was an Audubon member, one of the very first ones. He was like, ‘What if instead of killing things, we started counting them?’ And so that’s kind of how it was born in 1900 and it’s been going on ever since.”
Heather Young, an attendee, said the national park is a valuable resource that she is happy to support.
“I love it,” Young said. “I mean the national park here, the the Natchez Trace, is basically in our backyard. So why would I not use this resource? And yeah, if I can do anything to continue helping with different populations of creatures and vegetation it’d be really interesting.”
DeBardelaben said locals are the heart of the Park Service.
“People that live around the national parks, the locals, are kind of one of the hearts of the Park Service,” DeBardelaben said. “Because the Natchez Trace goes through so many different communities. And it’s really important to us that we get out there and actually have some. It’s nice to have tourists, but it’s great to have the locals and make that kind of relationship with the communities around us.”
Debardelaben detailed some of the research the data could go towards.
“It’s great because it’s used for all sorts of scientific studies,” DeBardelaben said. “For instance, studying the impacts of climate change to see if birds, for instance, that are more cold weather birds are they still coming as further south or are they stay in north longer? Or opposite of that we’re now seeing birds that are usually in the tropics and in Mexico actually ending up in like Texas, and Florida, and Louisiana. So they’re coming further north because it’s getting warmer.”
Young said volunteering time for important projects has a real impact.
“If you don’t actually get involved there is not going to be any change or any help,” Young said. “So you actually have to physically get out there and do things.”
Go to the Natchez Trace Parkway website or Facebook page to keep up to date with other events they are hosting.
