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Welcome to the Maryland-DC Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program. The program is a major bird conservation initiative carried out as a partnership between National Audubon and Birdlife International and is part of a worldwide program developed by Birdlife International.

The goals of the program are to identify the areas most essential for sustaining native bird populations, and then to focus conservation efforts on these places.

See these pages for more information on the IBA Program in Maryland and DC.

• Overview of the IBA Program
• Map and site descriptions of IBAs in Maryland and DC
• Criteria for site selection of IBAs: MS Word .doc 146KB / Adobe .pdf 83KB
• How to nominate an IBA.
  • If you know of a place that you think is important for birds, please consider filling in a nomination form: MS Word .doc 381KB / Adobe .pdf 211KB
• Download a brief fact sheet on Maryland-DC’s IBA Program (MS Word .doc, 880 KB)
  
  
• Bird Blitz 2008 - Count birds to identify Important Bird Areas
  Take part in Bird Blitz 2008 - click here for a map of sites needing surveys this year. Bird Blitz 2007 was a great success, and enabled us to identify 5 new IBAs! Click here to view a summary of the results.
  1. Bird Blitz article
  2. Bird Blitz instructions
  3. Bird Blitz survey form
  4. Bird Blitz Target species and mapping codes

See Audubon’s National IBA website for information about Important Bird Areas across the United States.

Great Blue Herons at Bloodsworth Island, Central Chesapeake Islands IBA. Photo: Dave Harp