ORNITHOLOGICAL LITERATURE 
421 
provides little insight on the information to be 
distributed, other than “conservation”. The 
important point is that we need to do a better 
job of educating people and the authors propose 
an increased focus on promoting PIF to other 
conservation partners. Conservation managers 
need to identify a specific issue, determine the 
target audience, the message they want the 
recipients to learn, and a specific resulting action 
by members of the audience. Bird conservation 
education has lagged behind conservation efforts 
in general and received fewer resources. The 
resources that been received have often gone to 
bird education rather than bird conservation 
education. The procedures and practices that are 
developed for bird conservation education must 
be prioritized and should follow tile North 
American Association for Environmental Educa¬ 
tion Guidelines for Excellence and other accepted 
standards of best practice. One-third of the needs 
identified at the conference were focused on the 
area of Education. Outreach, and Communication. 
The field needs a defined funding mechanism so 
that it can advance in an organized fashion. 
Monitoring Needs.—Monitoring avian popula¬ 
tions is an obvious component of all successful 
conservation projects. There arc —1,000 avian 
monitoring programs currently underway in the 
U.S. This level of effort is admirable but there has 
been little effort expended to standardize data 
collection protocols or techniques, or even to 
share data directly. The document lists eight areas 
of high priority monitoring needs. Some areas are 
targeted to fill information gaps (e.g.. What is the 
effect of capturing birds for the cage-bird market 
on the wild population?), others are to continue 
ongoing monitoring programs (e.g.. How is 
climate change affecting avian population sizes 
and distributions?). New techniques and technol¬ 
ogies are briefly reviewed and their potential 
contributions to avian monitoring programs as¬ 
sessed. One of the obvious needs is to standardize 
the data in G1S format "user-friendly” and 
“web-based” so that it will be accessible to a 
greater cadre of users, both scientists and non- 
scientists. This is the most clearly written and 
developed of the three “Needs” chapters. The 
final section on Next Steps enumerates what the 
authors gleaned from the participants. Some 
recommendations are essentially to continue 
along the current paths but others are to develop 
tools that will enhance the existing data and future 
data collection. One need is to develop a database 
of metadata describing the population monitoring 
data sets. 
Research Needs.—This chapter contains a 
review of many of the previous and ongoing 
research programs monitoring avian populations, 
and then identifies knowledge gaps. A high 
priority to aid in identifying gaps is the develop¬ 
ment of a database that contains what is known 
about the demographics and life history charac¬ 
teristics of avian species. A second category of 
need is to examine (he effects of human activity 
on avian populations: these include activities that 
can be managed (e.g., habitat modification, 
ecotourism) and those that cannot (e.g., global 
warming). The proposed Next Steps include the 
development of metadata about existing data sets, 
which are contained in data bases, reports, and 
publications. This will be an extremely huge 
undertaking because of the number of resources 
that exist, The data need to be summarized within 
a data base so they can be analyzed and compared 
with other studies for identification of knowledge 
gaps. 
These chapters on “Needs” provide an ambi¬ 
tious but necessary road map for avian conserva¬ 
tion in the Western Hemisphere; the challenge 
will be to find the funding necessary to begin 
working on the individual needs, especially where 
compilation across multiple data sources is 
involved.—ROBERT C. BEASON, P. O. Box 
737, Sandusky, OH 44871, USA: e-mail: Robert. 
C.Beason@gmail.com 
COMMUNITY ECOLOGY OF TROPICAL 
BIRDS. By E. A. Jayson and C. Sivaperuman. 
New India Publishing Agency. New Delhi, India. 
2010: 259 + xvi pages. 18 color plates. ISBN: 
978-93-80235-16-5. S48.00 (hardback).—Despite 
the generality of the title, this book reports the 
authors' own research on bird communities at two 
famous localities in the south Indian State of 
Kerala. The first half of the book describes a 5- 
year investigation into the forest birds of Silent 
Valley and surroundings, and the second half, 
3 years of study of the birds of the Kole wetlands. 
Each half contains chapters on species observed 
across seasons and years, density estimates, and 
some information on feeding ecology; no attempt 
is made to integrate the two halves. The book 
contains useful information, but could certainly 
have used a heavy dose of the editorial sword, 
e.g., the same tables and descriptions of equations 
