Celebrate Urban Birds New York State: The celebration will take place in New York state and involves over 60 partners in a bird citizen science effort that is implemented throughout the spring and culminates in a major event on May 12, 2007 in Central Park, New York City. The celebration serves to advertise an annual opportunity for everyone across the country to participate in projects focused on birds and neighborhood habitat improvement at the same time. People everywhere will learn about city birds, conduct bird counts for science, and engage in urban greening efforts. Celebratory events will take place at museums, nature centers, schools and after-schools, libraries, businesses, universities, science centers, senior centers, zoos, community centers, parks, daycare centers, backyards, and more. Each event will be unique. This year the celebration theme will center around urban greening for birds (through container plantings, community gardens, community beautification projects, green rooftops).

The project explores the use of birds to increase the participation of urban audiences, particularly those from underrepresented groups, in informal science education. It seeks to increase awareness of the potential value of habitat enhancement in urban settings and also explores the impacts of enhancement activities as well as patch sizes and distribution of green space patches.

We have engaged in the following activites:
1. Created a web registration site for partners
2. Scheduled a celebration in NYC in collaboration with CEENYC.
3. Created project materials and designed group activity kits.
4. Held workshop for partners at Cornell.
5. Engaged in fundraising activities.
6. Held an artist`s contest to create visual aids for the project.
7. Organized arts, birding, and scientific activities for the celebration.
8. Created press releases to help the celebration go national.
9. Hired new project assistant 0.5 FTE

The extension funding for this project is $28,500 per year and I also contributed money from other accounts in my program. The benefits include training of the partners at workshops, hiring of a half-time minority project assistant, outreach to Hispanic audiences with bilingual materials, and partner development. Project impacts are informal science education, increase sense of place, and support for habitat enhancement in cities.

Urban natural resources

Gretchen Ferenz (Cornell Cooperative Extension NYC)