Blueprint for Minnesota Bird Conservation

The Blueprint for Minnesota Bird Conservation was developed to assist natural resource managers, conservation groups, birders, and anyone interested in protecting and restoring Minnesota’s birds, prioritize and implement conservation activities across the state.

While numerous national, regional, and state conservation plans that broadly address Minnesota birds and their habitatst have been produced over the past 10-15 years, most of these plans are strategic in nature, establishing broad conservation and management goals.

The Blueprint was designed to push conservation beyond broad habitat protection goals, enabling anyone interested in the conservation of Minnesota’s avifauna to assess whether we, as a community, are implementing the correct actions and targeting the most important species and places to sustain these species as integral components of Minnesota’s landscape.

The Blueprint’s primary author was Lee Pfannmuller, who has extensive experience with bird conservation in Minnesota. She worked with Audubon staff and bird conservation experts from around the state.

The Blueprint for Minnesota Bird Conservation is divided into four geographic regions, plus Minnesota statewide. To focus conservation efforts we identified between several Target Species for each region.

Target species were identified as being in urgent need of conservation action based on the status of their population, habitat needs, and the types of threats they face. Each Target Species represents an important habitat within that region.