Volunteers are Providing the Data Needed to Manage Florida’s Endemic Bird

Florida Scrub-Jays are birds of robust opinions. They stay solely in Florida, they breed solely within the Florida scrub habitat, and so they can survive solely in habitat that has been stored open by hearth (or brush mowers—extra on that later). Particular person birds are additionally recognized to have robust personalities, which individuals typically describe as dramatic, flashy, or entertaining.

Their habitat—the Florida scrub—is equally idiosyncratic. It too solely exists in Florida. Searing sizzling within the day, sitting atop sandy soil that doesn’t maintain water, and traditionally lit on hearth each 15-20 years by lightning and Indigenous folks, you may assume it will be barren of life. However just like the Florida Scrub-Jay, at the least 40 species of crops, eight species of vertebrates, and 40 species of invertebrates exist solely within the Florida scrub. An entire neighborhood of dwarfed oaks, rosemary, lichens, and different crops has tailored particularly to the scrub setting, lots of that are federally endangered. It’s certainly one of North America’s most ignored biodiversity hotspots.

Scrub-jays developed an intimate relationship with hearth over two million years. Frequent hearth helps scrub oaks produce acorns, that are a key meals supply for scrub-jays. Fireplace maintains sandy openings that scrub-jays have to retailer their acorns in. And hearth retains scrub oaks brief sufficient for scrub-jays to make use of and deters taller bushes that predators use.

The specialised traits that allow scrub-jays to outlive imperiled them when their habitat modified.  Through the 19^th century, huge swaths of the Florida scrub have been destroyed for agriculture and growth and the life-sustaining fires have been suppressed. When scrub habitat stops burning, scrub-jays inevitably disappear. Due to habitat loss and hearth suppression, the Florida Scrub-Jay inhabitants has declined by 90 p.c because the early 1900s and was federally declared threatened in 1987.

At this time, 70 p.c of Florida Scrub-Jays stay at certainly one of 4 giant habitat strongholds: Ocala Nationwide Forest, Merritt Island Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station, and Archbold Organic Station. The remaining 30 p.c survive in small, scattered fragments of scrub habitat on public land throughout central Florida. Defending that 30 p.c is essential to the species’ survival however difficult to realize. Some managers of those small habitat parcels lack the capability to watch the scrub-jays on them, and good monitoring is crucial for good administration.

Introducing Jay Watch

In 2002, this downside caught the eye of The Nature Conservancy. They responded by creating Jay Watch, a neighborhood science program that trains volunteers to watch scrub-jays on properties that lack the capability to take action. In 2011, Jay Watch was transferred to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee, and in 2012, it was transferred to Audubon Florida, which has managed it since. The objective of this system is to supply land managers with the information they should restore and preserve viable scrub-jay populations on small properties.

To do that, groups of volunteers survey the scrub-jays at 46-50 websites annually. After scrub-jay chicks fledge (which occurs to be within the peak of Florida’s sweltering summers), volunteers spend three days at every website inventorying the populations there. They depend the variety of households, map their territories, measure their reproductive success, and supply a complete inhabitants depend.

As soon as the information have been collected, they must be became helpful merchandise for land managers. Audrey DeRose-Wilson, director of fowl conservation for Audubon Florida and the coordinator of Jay Watch, takes on that job. For every property surveyed, she creates a map of the scrub-jay territories and the composition of adults and juveniles per household.

As a result of scrub-jays are such good indicators of habitat well being, areas that they aren’t utilizing inform the managers that it’s most likely time to knock again the bushes and taller shrubs getting established there. Ideally, managers do that by conducting prescribed burns, however in lots of areas surrounded by buildings and roads, this isn’t attainable. In these locations, managers use brush mowers to imitate the results of fireplace. Jay Watch information additionally point out whether or not the location’s scrub-jay inhabitants and its reproductive success are growing or lowering, which signifies the well being of the habitat.

After 25 years, Jay Watch information have been shaping administration selections lengthy sufficient to have an effect on scrub-jay populations. One notable instance unfolded on the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway, a state park. In 2001, the state bought a 446-acre property adjoining to the greenway. Having gone unburned for a few years, the property now not had appropriate scrub-jay habitat. Shockingly, a state worker found eight scrub-jays dwelling on the property. Laurie Dolan, a Florida Division of Environmental Safety environmental specialist who helps handle the greenway, started restoring scrub-jay habitat within the hopes of saving this dwindling inhabitants. To information the trouble, she requested assist from Jay Watch to stock the sudden inhabitants of threatened birds.

Every time Dolan’s staff restored one other tract of scrub habitat, Jay Watch volunteers have been in a position to monitor how the scrub-jays responded. “The volunteers have been vital for us. I can’t inform you how vital they’ve been from the very starting,” she says. With 5 groups of volunteers, they’re in a position to survey the complete 1,000-acre website in three days. “We wouldn’t be capable to do this with simply our personal workers,” she says. Over twenty years of administration and monitoring, Dolan and her staff have grown the scrub-jay inhabitants from eight to greater than 100.

In 2025, about 150 volunteers participated in Jay Watch surveys, collectively contributing greater than 1,200 hours of labor. By offering this information to land managers who wouldn’t in any other case have them, Jay Watch helps them preserve a community of habitat parcels {that a} third of the species inhabitants is dependent upon. “They’re relying on the volunteers, and I actually could not cowl this floor on this brief period of time,” says DeRose-Wilson. She additionally shares Jay Watch information with the state of Florida, the place they inform species administration plans throughout the state. Cities and counties additionally use the information when grappling with administration selections at particular websites.

Extra Than Information

Monitoring endangered wildlife populations is a regular follow, however counting on a staff of volunteers to take action will not be. Along with bolstering capability, partaking volunteers builds societal help that scrub-jays want. DeRose-Wilson explains, “They arrive, they get invested, they study conservation, and so they take that data again into their communities and share it with all of the folks they know.” That outreach has supported real-world outcomes in a number of situations.

In 2024, the development of a golf course was proposed on Jonathan Dickinson State Park, which holds an vital scrub-jay inhabitants. Jay Watch volunteers joined an organized effort to protest the proposal and foyer their elected officers. Thanks to the public pushback, the golf course was by no means constructed.

In jap Florida, Malabar Scrub Sanctuary went years with out energetic administration. In consequence, it turned densely overgrown and its scrub-jay inhabitants died out. In 2023, a bunch of leisure mountain bikers opposed Brevard County’s plan to chop the bushes to revive scrub habitat. Jay Watch volunteers attended neighborhood conferences and defined the necessity to reduce bushes. Ultimately, restoration went forward and scrub-jays returned to the sanctuary.

Though Florida Scrub-Jays have a geographically small inhabitants, they characterize a conservation problem that’s frequent the world over. Like numerous species in the present day, they stay in an ecosystem that has been drastically altered by people. Restoring the populations means taking drastic steps—like slicing bushes and lighting fires—to revive the ecosystems that they depend upon. These restoration efforts are restricted not solely by information, but in addition by social help. Jay Watch is an instance of a technique to generate each.

Though Jay Watch surveys require strolling for hours within the solar throughout the hottest a part of Florida’s summers, the volunteers are pushed by its mission. Sure, some volunteers drop out after their first survey, however others come again for years. Ken Larsson, a Jay Watch volunteer, will get up at 4:30 am to drive to the surveys. “It is fairly tiring, but it surely’s a very good kind of drained,” he says. “I really feel very glad on the finish that I’ve performed one thing optimistic.”

In case you’re all for changing into a Jay Watch volunteer, sign up here!