Teton Regional Land Trust partners with the Bureau of Land Management, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Living Lands Project to monitor songbirds in the South Fork of the Snake River in Idaho. A focal species of the survey is the yellow-billed cuckoo, Coccyzus americanus, which is a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act, and is seen more often in the South Fork corridor than any other area of Idaho.

Idaho Important Bird Area

The South Fork provides important habitat for a variety of water birds, raptors and songbirds. As a result of the remarkable species diversity, the South Fork corridor has been designated as an Idaho Important Bird Area. Many species of birds rely on the area’s river and wetland habitats and the large unbroken stands of cottonwood trees with open canopy forest conditions for migration stopovers and nesting sites. Presence of the yellow-billed cuckoo reflects the health and quality of the cottonwood forests.

The South Fork corridor is composed of a mosaic of public and privately owned lands. This presents a key challenge for managing contiguous songbird habitat. Increased human development in the South Fork may lead to fragmented landscapes that affects adjacent properties, even those managed for wildlife values. With fragmentation come nest predators and food generalists, like magpies and robins, who could compete with vulnerable specialist species like the cuckoo.

Working with Partners

Teton Regional Land Trust provides a majority of the survey staff, with on the ground assistance from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Bureau of Land Management. The Living Lands Project contributed a $5,000 grant toward this monitoring effort that is helping to fund the project. Surveys in past years have documented yellow-billed cuckoo breeding in the South Fork corridor. Although no yellow-billed cuckoos have been observed during the last two seasons, survey staff has documented species richness and diversity among bird species. A few of the songbirds that breed along the South Fork include the yellow warbler, MacGillivray’s warbler, dusky flycatcher and willow flycatcher.

Using the Conservation Registry

Wray Landon, Resource Specialist with the Teton Regional Land Trust, writes: “The mission of the Teton Regional Land Trust is to conserve agricultural and natural lands and to encourage land stewardship in the Upper Snake River Watershed for the benefit of today’s communities and as a legacy for future generations. The Conservation Registry has helped to facilitate our mission by providing an outreach tool to help us promote the work we do.”

Staff and volunteers plan to be out there again next year looking for the cuckoo and the other wonders of this beautiful, vibrant habitat.

View project detail page

The State of Idaho now has over a hundred projects in the Registry, thanks to the Governor’s Office, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Idaho Natural Heritage Program. After a slow start, Idaho has almost as many individually-entered projects as Oregon—no small effort considering the amount of detail people are adding to their project descriptions. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game mandated that all conservation projects in Idaho should be entered into the Conservation Registry, and Rita Dixon, Biodiversity Team Leader, started it off with a bat conservation project in Shoshone County.

If you go to the project detail page, you will notice that the actual sites are hidden from view—a Registry feature designed to protect sensitive species and habitats. New projects are, well, all over the map from flammulated owls in Custer County, steelhead monitoring in the Potlatch River, to American white pelicans in Cassia County. Visit the Idaho portal and see what’s new.