Using the Bird-friendliness Index to assess impacts of Best Management Practices for grassland conversion

Birds, through their songs, can tell us a lot about the health of working landscapes. However, grassland birds that rely on agricultural working landscapes are in steep decline, having decreased 67% since 1970. 

In response to this conservation challenge, Birds Canada has adapted the Bird-friendliness Index (BFI) – originally developed by the Audubon Society for the Great Plains of the U.S.- to the working landscape of the Canadian Prairies. The BFI is a biodiversity indicator developed to assess and communicate the impact of land management and use on bird communities at a farm level. 

Since 2021, Birds Canada has worked with partners including Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef producers to conduct bird surveys and calculated the BFI scores on farms, ranches, Indigenous lands and community pastures, all representing hundreds of thousands of unique acres of the agricultural working landscape in the Prairies. 

The findings of these surveys affirm that the BFI is effective at identifying farms providing above-average benefits to birds and biodiversity and farms where actions can be taken to improve conditions for birds and biodiversity. 

The Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef has adopted the BFI as an acceptable method to demonstrate biodiversity requirements for CRSB certification. CRSB producers can choose to have the BFI measured on their farms and ranches to fulfill a portion of the requirements needed to become CRSB certified.  

By effectively and efficiently measuring and communicating biodiversity impact, the BFI can be applied within innovative approaches to enable a market environment that rewards producers for positive biodiversity impacts and enable an agricultural system that actively recovers birds and biodiversity – saving the birds that rely on these landscapes. 

Birds Canada would like to thank the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef for their engagement in this work, as well as thank the following organizations who have partnered with us or supported this work: Environment and Climate Change Canada, Manitoba Habitat Conservancy, Saskatchewan Fish and Wildlife Development Fund, South of the Divide Conservation Action Program Inc., Nature Conservancy of Canada, ALUS, Assiniboine West Watershed District and the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Foundation.  

For more information please visit: birdscanada.org/grasslands 

Bird-friendliness Index Overview-web-Aug14-2024.pdf 

BFI-Case-Study-Hodgins Farm-final-web-Aug14-2024.pdf