Andrew Couturier, Senior Director, Landscape Science and Conservation with Birds Canada will discuss the relationship between Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) and KBAs in Canada. In the late 1990s, Birds Canada led a comprehensive process to identify IBAs, resulting in 600 sites, roughly half of which have stewardship groups working at them to conserve birds and habitats. The KBA approach (modelled heavily on the successful IBA program) aims to consolidate IBAs and other existing approaches for identifying important biodiversity sites under one framework. This presentation will showcase progress to date on the cross-walk of IBAs to the KBA Standard, share lessons learned, and illustrate some of the challenges of the work. Next steps are discussed with respect to integration of data on birds and other biodiversity, and also continuing the conservation work of IBAs under the new KBA umbrella.

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