Gabriel Foley: “Maryland & DC Breeding Bird Atlas 3.”
Gabriel Foley, a biologist and an enthusiastic birder from the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada is currently the Coordinator for the Maryland & DC Breeding Bird Atlas 3 which is now over halfway complete! This is the third iteration of a fine-scale project mapping where the region’s 200+ species of birds are nesting. The hundreds of thousands of data points used to create these maps are collected almost entirely by volunteer participants who head into every corner of the region in search of breeding birds. With the remaining two years of data collection, the focus will be on getting each sampling unit, or ‘block,’ to reach its completion targets. As Atlas Coordinator, Gabriel Foley will provide an update on the project’s current status and an overview of how to atlas most effectively. Over the past decade, Gabriel Foley has worked on research projects in Canada, the US, and South Africa and for conservation organizations like the Nature Conservancy of Canada.