education act and he worked on the amendments of 1997. that was 20 years ago. the gridlock and partisan shop. with david hoppe is how we strengthened the laws that govern special-education. you build consensus and work tired because he personally understood the importance of improving opportunities for young people with disabilities. davis said gregory has down syndrome and i love they share has inspired the policies he's worked to create and continue south benefit millions of students with disabilities to this day. i encourage each and every one of you here with us who watch television into google and see from the archives of "usa today" article entitled how one bullet

in the congress. in the article, david train for attacks about waking up and coming home every day to see some of his life has been deeply impacted by the choices made by congress. many in this room today and those of you watching today on television on c-span can relate to that i know what that means to bring that passion into your work. i'm also proud today that one of my fellow board members, jonathan murray has created a new television show called born this way. how many of you are familiar with that? everyone in this room. fantastic. the show stars seven people with down syndrome. i encourage you to watch the show every tuesday night because you will see how talented and amazing these folks are who are on the show. and how incredibly talented so many people with down syndrome

and many other disabilities are as well. today children with disabilities have the legal right to a free and appropriate public education. inclusion, intervention and high expectation or reality for many and to a large extent because it do its work. in 2003, david left the hill to work for a public affairs firm serving as president of pga from 20,722,011 when he returned to the senate to direct with office for center kyl. he also that the campaign. however, hoppe has never left the critical work of being an ally in this community. recently he served as senior adviser to the bipartisan policy center works on crucial policy issues affecting social security.

david also served as vice chairman of the board of easter seals of the district of columbia and maryland and northern virginia, was chairman for the national center and serves on the board of coalitions to promote self-determination. a group of organizations to empower individuals to achieve greater independence. quite a few rolls while also working full-time in being a parent. recently david played a major role in the creation of the new able act which for the first time enable parents of children with disabilities to prepare their children financially for the future. the legislation as we know is a game changer and we thank you for all of your efforts to make april a reality. david hoppe's life is a testament to how love and personal experience can shape the political process. his humility and efforts are numerous and his leadership is very clear.

we are pleased to honor you with this award in thank you for everything you done. we are all eager to hear your comments and i know you and governor markell are willing to take a few questions. thank you very much. [applause] >> well, thank you very much. appreciate it. i am profoundly honored and deeply humbled by this award. if you're known by the company you keep, appeared to be honored

along with you, governor is truly an honor. one of the things i love about respectability that isn't always true as you are so inclusive. you want to help everybody and everybody gets ahead because of that. thank you, jennifer. the disability community is doing my things together than in the past peer but mitac about disabilities. if you look back on a friend of our family is daughter was born 33 years ago with down syndrome and significant part effects. the doctor said you have to think about institutionalizing her. 33 years old. if you look at what has happened

in the last two generations, the world has changed. it has to change a lot more, but the world has changed with people with disabilities. early intervention, education, idea which passed in 1975 and then ada. if you look at the people who work so hard for their children, for their friends and other people in society with disabilities. we stand on the shoulders of giants, people who have changed this world in profound ways that post of us only dream about. let's think about that. you look at this as the first mountain of early intervention. when i send greg was born he was three months old before he was taking classes, physical therapy and my wife was working three times a week and therapy classes

and every day at home. shortly after that we got them into therapeutic or write a witch was marvelous and i never understood that he became a kid who couldn't climb and after the first six months this kid was climbing all over. i still don't understand. doctors tell me what it is. i don't understand it. those are things that change the world. not on the her my son, that millions and millions of others. the next mountain to climb as education and idea changed it. it changed it slowly at first, laboriously. over time we were able to make other changes and to improve the law for people with disabilities , but it was the second bout that we had to change it legally to provide the

opportunities. ada came along shortly after that, probably making changes and forcing an inclusion of people with disabilities and the way our society had never done before. we now are looking at the third mountain. just their early intervention of schooling have been brought up with their peers. is there little wonder we want to stay with their fears? we see more and more programs throughout the country and postsecondary education for people with disabilities. the next big hurdle is independent living and jobs and housing and transportation, all the things people with disabilities need to be a part of society the way they ought to be.

these are things that are going to take some time, but we should never let that slow us down. we know we have to work hard. we know we have to push and move things around. as we start doing this, you find this is a way and as we move towards the mountain there are things we have to do legally does this and changes in things the governor talked about in the private sector. things are going to have to change. people in the private sector has to look at people with disabilities and see dr. disabilities but their ability. this is the next map we have declined. there's people doing this. for example it stood for economic empowerment. in some other areas throughout the country where they are trained to match a people with disabilities with the right job

to internships to make sure the job is the person and the person fits the job. it will be a lifelong job. but we have to start doing is as i said, we found ourselves measuring the wrong things. i don't think this is unlike if if you look at poverty. we are measuring how many people are poor and how much government made they are getting. all of those are necessary but the real goal ought to be how to get them back into society so that their talents are being brought and used in society like everybody else's. that's what we have to do for people with disabilities. make sure we find a place for them to use their abilities and their talents and the best way possible so we can take all

those talents and build a bigger, better society for all. we are using their talents, their abilities and what they can give us as a society. for every person who's unemployed, we are the same those talents. as a country we can't afford to lose those talents. as we have to make sure it is a net that allows somebody to climb off and move forward, our disability programs on the private sector has to look at people with disabilities as providing the first step on the ladder. i saw a great working at an area president with the team of five kids and a job coach. there's nobody prouder to bring home a paycheck than dave hoppe. my wife and great go to the bank

which is where he has been since high school and they go and take the check in. the tellers on no head and he always gets $2 out for each sunday of the month and $2 out to get us out of because come sunday if you don't take the collection twice come he chases you around the church to give you the second dollar. he also likes to get a drink every once in a while and he can pay for it with his own money. the talents and the opportunity that he has, the mountain we are climbing right now is key. i want to talk about two other things we have to work on. one is that there's so many things stove piped and redo things over here from people with disabilities in things over here for people with disabilities that they have to

be combined and we have to find a way to do that. one of the things i want to do working for the speaker is to start looking at that. it's pretty hard to get jurisdictional differences and committees. if you don't believe so, just ask them. we are going to start working on now. we have to do that in the federal government itself to make sure they have different pieces of the role of responsibility start bringing together. one of the things that would be helpful is looking at having disability and in the administration. a person who has to be close enough to the president because all the members of the cabinet have to know when this person calls if they don't answer, the next person they get a call from mr. president. i think this is a way we can start breaking this down. as the bible tells us, it is our talents we have to use which are

important in making use of the talents on every person in society is our goal and our work here and i want to thank all the people who've gone before us was raised us up to that level where we can start doing things of taking a path to climb the third mountain. climbing the third mountain will truly bring people with disabilities on an equal level throughout our society and provide the opportunities and talents are society need because they don't have the opportunity. this will take all of us working together. government, private sector, nonprofit organizations. churches, all those places. intermediate organizations that talks about all of those have to be a part of this process and thanks to groups like respectability and leadership by

governor markell, we are well on our way there. [applause] >> file, what amazing leaders. we have an opportunity for questions from the audience. don't be shy. please come up to the microphone and introduce yourself and ask your question at these two amazing leaders. one for the democratic party. one for the republican party, each of whom have made a massive, massive difference on behalf of the 56 lane americans with disabilities. yes, please come on. >> good evening, gentlemen. congratulations on your award. well deserved. my name is suzanne. on the paralyzed veterans of

america. to governor markell, i'd be interested to know what is happening to your initiative in the aftermath of your year and what has been ongoing on the nga now. mr. hoppe, it in an era of fiscal i stared in constraints and budget tightness, how do you see working through some of the advances you talked about in your remarks. a question for each. >> banks. i'm actually going to say in response to your second question, one of thinks about this issue as this should not be -- this should not defined what happened here. what has encouraged me so much this so much to secede governors of both parties, plenty of democrats and republicans embrace this issue. embracing the issue doesn't always take a lot of money. it's really about a change in

mind that within the government and within the private sector and certainly a change in mindset between in terms of how the government interacts with the private sector. i got at this a little bit earlier, but it's important to really emphasize. mr. hoppe started to talk about this in his own remarks. what has encouraged me the most is to see people starting to think differently about how to address the issue from a governmental perspective. instead of saying no pay, my job is to work with these employers to find jobs for people with disabilities. more and more we are seeing state department of labor saying our responsibility is to help the employers in our state find people of talent. when you approach it that way and say my job in the department

of labor is to understand at a granular level what are the needs of your particular business and what talents are you looking for and then i can say in response that is great because i have a lot of people looking for work and they have all kinds of abilities. i don't have to focus on the disability. different people bring different things to the table. that is a big change in mindset and i have been encouraged and jennifer will send to me fairly often in an update from one state or the next. i'm a democrat but scott walker talked about this in two consecutive state of the state's beaches in wisconsin. the governor of south dakota has embraced this. terry branstad has embraced this as have many democratic governors including dan malloy and connecticut. it's been really exciting to see different folks who've taken it in slightly different directions but i think all with the same goal.

>> just to add on to what the governor said. once again, it's not necessarily how much money is spent, it is how well we spend the money and making sure it goes to the best use. the purpose is not to save money. the purpose is to spend money wisely saltworks of people who are getting help from the programs are able to move off programs into full-time work. some of that will be in the governor. some of it in the air. we all know if we talk about tens of millions of people with disabilities getting jobs, a lot of those jobs have to be in the private sector. we have to look for ways to make that work and help employers understand the attitudes and help them see. let me use as an example. my son greg is a great reader and it makes doing puzzles and playing games and he loves

performing. it strikes me that there is retirement homes but right now we have trained nurses doing all those things which is great because they are wonderful people. but you don't need a trained nurse to read to somebody. you don't need tell you a story. as my mother aged, she is to tell stories for trained for security here is the story. he would love to read people. if they had a song, there's nobody singing louder than great hoppe. their opportunities we just haven't thought of yet. let's pulled us apart. governors talk about it. let's figure out where they are and where these opportunities exist. that is why that we are looking. guess it's an area that you have to watch deficits.

the question is how well you spend your money, not how much you spend. if you spend it right, you are going to get more back because people will become workers in society contributing fully to society in the way they want to and on the two. >> if people want to ask a question, they should do so with the hash type p. w. d. for people with disabilities vote and we will look for twitter on questions. we have a question here. >> good afternoon, mr. hoppe and good afternoon, governor markell. on the policy director for respectability. to the governor, i'm wondering if you could speak about the work that you've done with the high-tech jobs that people with disabilities have been getting through the partnership.

i want to shift and direct a question to you. part of my responsibility is overseeing our fellows. i work with fellows who join us to work on policy projects and i see these incredibly bright count people with and without disabilities. you are obviously one of the policy one dream jobs. you are right in the guts of moving legislation and impacting our nation. for career advice would you give to a young person with a disability is interested in politics or policy. how can they get involved and get a job and go on a trajectory to fall your way. thank you. >> the advice is the same whether they have a disability or no disability. if you care about politics, look to where you can get involved. sometimes it's a campaign. sometimes it is back-and-forth

making sure you look for the opportunities. it is also willing to take on as he started job, any job in the office. we would all like to come in and rewrite the cons to teaching. that is usually not the first b-day. the first job he did as anything they need. the people who do that with a smile, with positive attitude as well as they can, always asking for other things they can do are the people others in the office notice and say this as somebody who cares about the work. you've got to have some good political commonsense. you work in these jobs and that has to be a part of it. part of that is to you enjoy it, do i politics and working with people and figure out a way to solve a problem that is a political problem. sometimes it can be a partisan problem. more often than not it's a sensitive problem.

research, those talents of the bonds, the basic talented person has to have. just having a positive attitude, digging and commit to a never job happily and doing it well is the star to every good career i know on capitol hill. just like everyplace else, jobs are hard to find it here. be there, be available. you can start tomorrow if that's your situation. those are the types of things you have to have available, letting them know how soon you can start. those are the same for everybody and that is where the opportunities lie getting the first and second step on the ladder. my first job i came out of graduate school to a grand salary of $12,000 a year. like most of their kids to start on the hill, try to find a free reception so you can get enough

food to eat that night for dinner. you don't start high on the scale, but you have a great opportunity to work and provide and help people. pretty darn good jobs. i've enjoyed 30 years of working those jobs. they have their rewards. a friend of mine said when you work on capitol hill, when you go to your car at night, you think of what you've done for your country. if you can do that, it'll be a pretty good staffer on the hill. >> glance to the question for me. 60 years ago is reading a blog entry in "the new york times" about a man in denmark who was working in the i.t. industry. he was on the fast track doing very, very well. his son do is to result at the the time was diagnosed with autism. the more they spend learned about autism and the more concerned u.s. about his son's future and he ended up deciding to leave his job in the fast

track to start an organization to help people with autism work in the information technology industry. many people on the autism spectrum can do really good work when it comes to software testing data analysis and the like. i read an article about him. to make a long story short i called in and said we need you and would love to have you come to delaware. we moved with his family to delaware because he wanted to break into the global market. five years later he's trained more than 50 people in delaware. people with autism working in the information technology industry. but he has started a national movement. his name is torque kill and this organization is special or eastern, and now what you've found this company is like

s.a.t., massive, incredibly great company committed over the next couple of years, cia and other regional information technology. 3% of their employees will be people with autism. people like microsoft and jpmorgan chase and bank of america are embracing myth and there is nothing more meaningful than to go to their office to see the young people they trained who can relate with such pride to the fact that they've got a job and they are contributing. these are folks with incredible talent and ability but who had difficulty perhaps in the interview or communicating their passion for the business and now they're employed. this can take place across a range of disabilities and this is why i say once again when you focus on the ability rather than the disability it's amazing what we can all accomplish together. >> i'm going to take moderators

privilege and ask a question which is that people with disabilities really want to be seen as equal and went to gain political power. each of you understand what political power takes. what advice do you have to the disability community with large the matter with the disability is, physical, mental, help from any other disability for her community to be taken seriously as they can future of the group in the united states. >> i'll take the first crack but i will refer to something david said which is one of the things he'd seen as the disability community working together. this is very important because although the issues may vary somewhat from one group to announce the miniature does everybody wants nothing more than to share in the american dream. people in various disabilities is why we are here focused on employment opportunities and one

at the very positive things to come out of our work was to see people all around the same table coming from many different backgrounds, all working together. i do think this is really important. if this community is fractured i think it makes it less likely we are able to make the progress that we all want to make. it is true of every group i deal with on this issue or others. but you're going to check your egos at the door and not worry about who gets the credit, it is amazing what we can get done and that is true here as well. >> on capitol hill a work project tab and jack used to say the great thing about america is a built-in idea. that idea is no person is

restricted. every person has the opportunity to be everything they can be. that's the great thing about america. that's fantastically defense everybody has. one of the things the governor said earlier is we've got to overcome a biased people have in their mind about what limitations people with disabilities have. the attitude has to change. people have to look at things. people don't do this because they have some dark part of their soul. they just don't think. they don't think broadly enough. they don't open up the horizon widely enough. that's what we have to do is make sure everybody looks at this as a field of opportunity. jack can play professional football. he was pretty good at it.

i barely played high school football and i was pretty bad at it. all of us have things we do better in all of us have things we do worse. but i'm not the things we do better, let's find opportunities. that attitude is really the big thing that needs to be changed and it is starting to change and is one of the mountains we have declined. it is starting by saying i will not let my focus be narrowed to only one thing. that's broadening out and see where the opportunities are. >> respectability has a questionnaire which was given to each of the presidential candidates and now we are doing it with governors and senators and we hope the people watching are going to encourage governors and senators and candidates for the job to fill out the candidate questionnaire. i just wonder if can you talk about the process of the candidate questionnaire because

there's a lot of candidate questionnaires, but this is the first one i disabilities on a national scale. how important are they? how did the campaign approached them? what are the kinds of ways that people can engage in policy conversations with candidates? >> that's a great question. the candidates approach them carefully. sometimes they are designed with got you questions. sometimes people refrain from answering them. the deeper the dialogue between the community in any state or district that cares about these issues and the candidate the better. i think he was the first time i ran for governor in 2000 made there was actually a foreign on disability issues and i think that was pretty powerful. both candidates agreed to

present and it got everybody's attention and we actually got fairly deep into the issues in a very constructive frankly a political way. as you can tell i don't think you can tell you the democrat is a republican is because that is not how these issues work. it is not sufficient just to send him blindly a candidate survey to the campaign because there are so many and it's hard to judge which ones are legitimate, which ones are not legitimate. i try to develop a relationship with the campaign to let them know a lot of people are interested in the answers to the question as opposed to sending it in blindly. >> i emphasize that the government said breaching out of a personal basis and in a tight time and it's not going to be with the candidate first in all likelihood. it will be with people in the campaign. this campaign said people in a figurative way to get done.

some of them doing press for who grew to know people not on the price tag of the campaign but the policy side. those are the people who establish a relationship. >> is there an individual that comes to mind for a case study of somebody who came to you with an issue and they opened up your mind to something. how do they go about that and how can somebody else follow in their first types? >> by me tell you how i got involved. it was the summer of 1996 and had gone through the house and passed up a fairly large margin. a group of women who had been working in the house came to see me. one of them came in fact if i been in my office. she looked at my computer and

not that time i had pictures of my kids that would rotate. i settled understand how that all works. she saw this space. she thought i'd got to be seeing things. that's a child with down syndrome. basically they tricked me. they said we've got this one issue. i realize that passed in the house. we just have a word to out yet. we really have to get it worked out, but they basically want to make sure the records followed the student after student but for one district to another their records followed them whether they had disability or didn't. isn't it better for the student in the school system. i said that sounds good to me. i got two people together from a democrat staffer and republican staffer who are smart people inside can you talk about this. they figured out how to write something. but they didn't tell me as it

was sort of like the iceberg. i was seeing 10% about the problem was and the other 90% was below the water. talking to dan and working through that problem, starting out that kind of fooled me and got me hooked. that is what got me involved other than being a dad. mom tends to do most of the work. the real policy work started for me. >> governor. >> it's about the personal relationships and stories and when he introduced me earlier and told you about the 25-year-old man with down syndrome who i met years ago before he got this job he sat at home for six years watching tv with his parents. statistics are important, but it's really just as important to make sure candidates know about

the people behind the statistics. same is true of the able at. i think it is fantastic what she did at the national level and the young girl, probably about 10 now. i got to know her from the first moment as governor and she is in school and tells me how things were going and usually comes in a second time a year. it's all about the importance of the able act. i think it is always about combining the statistics are important, but we don't go into office for statistics. we go in because we want everyone to go as far as their potential will take them. >> you are amazing leaders and we are deeply honored you are with us today and on behalf of

respectability alike to thank you for a lifetime of achievement. each of you is still young so it is not like the academy award for lifetime achievement and we expect the next thing to be an event. for each of you we expect many great things to calm and build a building from here to the better future. i want to say something personal for my part to each of you. when we started respectability and you met a couple board members and you've seen some of our fellows that i myself wanted to do it and that i wanted a really solid business plan and i wanted to build on what other people have done. i sent a draft to dave hoppe and governor markell who are too unbelievably busy people. each of them took the time line by line to go through the business plan and give us feedback and advice.

hopeful times that come to a in the road that led early on at night or weekend i can e-mail one of these individuals and say listen i'm having a problem with this. what is your guys or can you help or can you introduce me to somebody and they'll take my e-mail on nights and weekends asking for help and they are pointing me and our team in the right direction. they understand it is not about the governmental loans that the nonprofits in the state-based community and the businesses and so many other stakeholders have so much at stake that each of them have really bad the rising tide that lifts all ships. on behalf of our organization i want to thank governor jack markell and dave hoppe for your amazing leadership that we think

is only just starting. thank you. [applause] for those of you who were, if you are a fellow of respectability or i must ask if you can come up really quickly we are going to take a picture if that is okay. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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>> mark in the 100th anniversary of the migratory bird treaty, conservationist from the u.s., canada and mexico talk about the current science for north american bird migration of the wilson center in washington yesterday. this is about an hour and a half.

>> ballclub to the wilson center. they have an interesting program of collaboration on many levels. a bit about the wilson center. it is a presidential memorial created by congress and as a special kind of presidential envoy with a nod towards a career as a scholar and so was created and continues in after it's to create public policy to analyze the issues and to have actionable recommendations on those. it is a preeminent think tank in the world. it has many institutions under its roof, two of which are most important to us today. one is the institute run by laura dawson and sitting back there and the other is the kennedy institute. duncan is here. he will be back.

two very dynamic institute gives the wilson center something quite unique for north american studies because it is the only place where you have to institute that are focusing on the issues of the other countries in north america out of the united states. they are the cohosts for this program today. my name is jim meyer. i am here for a year, very fortunate to be here for a year. it's not like i don't like working for the state department, but working for the wilson center i get to focus on the north america region. dear to my heart as served at the u.s. embassy in mexico for five years earlier in my career. i left last year after three years serving in toronto, canada. i have been able to experience

in my career the opportunity the three countries working together can provide all of us. as you know, the three leaders of north america that up in ottawa for the north american leaders summit recently in june. they had a long list of actionable items and areas which they plan to work and have their three bureaucracies, their three governments work. they recognize this particular initiative of the migratory bird treaty msa model something they continue to work on. at that conference, they also asked or announce that there would be a stakeholders dialogue created to accompany the north american leaders summit process as it goes forward. they asked the woodrow wilson center to host that in the fall. it's an important step to bring in outside injuries as representative of the nature

conservancy and others that can get involved and to take up pretty much every year they come together. i won't go into a lot about the treaty extent because they think will get into a debate except to say it's a delight for the wilson is the two that is based on the treaty signed by senator wilson. it was also signed at that time by the king of england and representing canada at that time. a few decades later by the president of mexico and was the first of such an agreement. i want to thank you call for coming. the nature conservancy. i won't go deeply into his bio.

the nature conservatories and he's been with the organization more than 25 years which means he started as an intern. both in moderating the panel and i'll ask him to take us away. thank you. [applause] >> thanks, jim. i work for the nature conservancy which is headquartered right here in arlington, virginia although i am based in albuquerque, new mexico. ..

it's great fun to be here. as jim said, for those of us in the bird conservation field, it's a wonderful coin kidden to be at the wilson center as we celebrate today, the 100th anniversary of the sign of the migratory treaty. it was not the first but one of the first pieces of conservation legislation certainly enacted here in the united states and sometimes hard to imagine with all the things that are going on now that, you know, countries to

join. over time in addition to méxico joining the treaty, we have u.s. has also sign treaties with japan and russia so it's truly a multinational thing. i'm going to go ahead and introduce our speakers here to. my immediate left is dr. charles francis. next is deb hann and finally we are going to hear from humberto berlanga in méxico city.

so charles, i believe you're up first. >> so thank you, what i'm going to tell you about today is a project that we have been working on and completed just recently in north america's birds. this is a project that brought together the three countries. this is the first time we tried to do a joint report for the three counties. there's copies aft report just outside the door there. north america's birds. we did analyses of birds within the countries but the first time to try to bring it together and first time to do a comprehensive report looking at all species. we are working with the north american conservation initiative which is a 20-year-old initiative that brings together some of the top bird experts, various ngo's and federal governments between the three countries to work on this. is this connected?

[laughter] >> as was mentioned, one of the motivations for doing the report today it's the centennial of the signing of that treaty but it's also the 80th anniversary this year of the signing of the treaty between méxico and united states. so it's not technically the same treaty but treaties that unit and give us among other things federal jurisdiction for working on these species and so there's the report, the cover, next. so essentially what this report involved was scientific efforts an some of us at this table was participating and i myself managing that the whole thing got put together.

the scientific experts looked at population trends, size, breeding and winter range, something that's restrict today very small range and then the threats an the species in that range but not necessarily. those were aggregated to create a score. i'm not going to give you the details but the rest are in the report but i'm going to highlight one of the most key findings and my colleagues will talk about what do we do with this report and how are we going to use this to help the birds, okay. so the bottom line or top line is maybe the way we layed out the report is that 37% of the

species, nearly 40% have serious conservation concerns. that could be major population declines or threats there's ongoing declines, it has to be high actually on several different factors to get onto that watch list. not only do they have large declines but restricted ranges and threats as well. some are listed as endangered but not all of them. our hopes to address those threats, address those declines so that we don't have to take what we call the er, emergency response, which is really what the endangered species act is. it's a lot of work to trying to recover species and to do that for 430 species will be quite a challenge. what we did next is how did that break down across habitat. next.

you can get the details from the report afterwards. i'm going to highlight the key groups. the top three groups, oceans and tropical and subtroppal forests where more than half of the species are of concern. you look@next one, coasts, airlands, grasslands not that many on that list. if something doesn't happen, they'll be on that list soon. next. not all of these solutions are easy. if they were easy we might have done them already. some of them, of course, we are working on. we have a section building on success. thing that are works that we can continue to develop and a section basically sort of challenges -- [laughter]

>> it's okay. birds can't nest on the water. they have to come to land. many nest on islands. one of the big challenges of islands is invasive species, cats, somebody has introduced it some where and makes the sea birds vulnerable. in a number of areas some of the critical places where sea birds are nesting that have been successful eradication programs to try and get rid of the rats, we know those can work, they're not cheap and expensive but it's an area that we can continue to develop. sorry. [laughter] >> marine protected areas is something that we have been slowly working on. one of the key is that most of our actions benefit not just birds but the environment and ultimate the people.

rain protected areas will help keep the diversity of ecosystem which will help the food base. those of you who haven't seen it, plastics floating around the oceans, many fish, sea birds, turtles these those mistaking them for food and they die, sustainable fisheries. there's two components from the bird's perspective. they get caught on fishing hooks because they go to the bait. there are ways to set up the hooks that they drop quickly so you don't drown albatrosses, so those practices are getting used in our waters but internationally. it's essential for all of us. we are going to run out of fish if we don't have that. it'll benefit all of us.

we talk about tropical first. we think that's issue for méxico was they have tropical forest, mexican birds are our birds because that magnolia warbler, the red greenish area is where they are breeding and the area in between, eastern u.s. is where they are migrating through, many of them are coming from canada but the whole population that breeds from one province to the other, one end from canada and goes to yucatan peninsula. so we care about those tropical forest birds because many of them are also canadian birds.

next. i don't think this is going to -- i'm not sure if this is going show very well. i will talk about it as it goes. there's some glowing down there. this is an interesting map. we need to work on the graphic colors. a you see it will expand north and see the gray spraying up here, this is may, late may, we are working into june and you say where all the birds are breeding, that red and white, what's interesting about this map is this map was generated by bird watchers and just people who go birding, they write down what they see and entered into something called e-bird, a giant bird database and several billion hours of processing time they've taken the hundreds of thousands of observations, actually millions of observations and been able to generate this list that shows how that species migrates up through and then back again and there's a series of these on our

website, they are rather fun to lock at. i wasn't sure whether to stick it in but it highlights power of what we call citizen science and, of course, all the birders collecting collecting the data are the same birders that help us with conservation. so that is an important database. so working in the tropics is probably one of our biggest single conservation challenges and the key thing to working at a tropics is working with people because the pressure on these forests is the line used and the development and if the people have healthy happy livelihoods and particularly ones that benefit from and take advantage of natural forests then they will protect the forests for themselves and in the process prellt the -- protect the forests for the birds. yes, we have protected areas.

gist saying a protected area doesn't mean it's going to be there forever. we also have to work outside of it. we don't only want to have 20%. we want those working landscapes, places where people live and eat and feed and work to also be supporting a diversity of birds and we can do that through sustainable forestry, through sustainable timber harvesting, ecotourism. and then the other area that i want to focus on as i say, there are other others of concern is grasslands, they are important from a national perspective because it shows where many of the breeding birds in canada in red and the u.s. winter in méxico. there's about 20 species of grassland birds that only found in north america and the grasslands are threaten at all parties of the range and if we

look in the chihuahuaan desert in central méxico, we look at bird spe these only going and declining twice as fast as all the other grassland species. the strong evidence that the challenge for those is lack of wintery habitat and they don't survive and come to breed the next year. it's important to have breeding habitat where they can nest, lay their eggs but if they can't come back, we are going to have a population challenge. the challenge with grasslands, next slide is again working with people. if you take a pastor that was used for cattle or convert it to soya bean it no longer has value to the birds and in the dry desert areas it won't have value for the crops because they need

to irrigate and use up water supply so it's really bad for everybody in the long-term. somebody is benefiting short-term but it's bad for society, bad for economy and bad for birds in the long-term and we need to work on policies that support what we call sustainable farming, interesting enough many of the grasslands birds grew up in the area where there were hundreds of millions of bisons, they are used to gracing pressure. they are used to working in a cattle-bison. i don't think the birds care. it helps to support them. a final slide, basically the bottom line that we come out with is if it's good for people in terms of the long-term healthy lands and water are sustainable for birds and for people. so thank you. [applause] >> i think we will save questions till the end so we can ask the panel together, so i

think debbie, you're next, i believe. >> okay. [inaudible conversations] >> no worries. all right, thank you. good afternoon. i'm deb hahn. i'm not sure how many of you are familiar with that organization, but we are a professional association that serves as a collective voice for state presidential and territorial fish and wildlife agencies so the 50 u.s. wildlife associations are members as well as canadian provinces.

we also have a number of federal agencies in u.s. and canada that work on conservation, either fish and wildlife service, bureau of land management. canadian wildlife service that are also members along with a number of ngo's include manager in the room including tnc and others. charles got into some of the science and i think i was asked to start to move science towards kind of what does it mean in the three countries. what does it mean from business practice standpoint and policy standpoint. we've had 1300 years of implementation of the migratory treaty act. we've had amazing success but i think from a conservation community standpoint, we are looking at ourselves and saying what do we have to do differently in the next hundred years so that we can ensure that people biodiversity, for us it's important an business thrives? how do we make that happen for the next hundred years?

next. all of these things in my mind connect together and you don't necessarily talk about birds, you can talk about healthy lands, healthy air, healthy water and i would argue that long-term economic growth and businesses are not countered to have healthy land, healthy air and healthy water and the birds are indicators of the health of these areas, so what we know are the policies to make this a reality. next. i'm going to touch base on a few policy opportunities that are somewhat u.s. centric but include conservation in canada and méxico and in some cases throughout the hemisphere. so very important to us and coming out of this report is the tropical migratory conservation act. it's administered by the u.s. fish and wildlife service. it's critical funding service

for neotropical migratory, 3.5 to 5.5 million appropriated by the u.s. congress each year and as you can see a large amount of match that has gone into the program from conservation partners across the hemisphere and we have a number of projects in canada and méxico and the u.s. uniting our three countries. next. another one that is north america focused is the wetlands conservation act, another very successful act that has put billions on the ground in canada, méxico and the u.s. also a very important policy here in the u.s. within our congress. next. this is a u.s.-only program, but charles brought up tbraseslands and there are policies within canada and méxico that i'm not an expert on but that i know are very important to the

conservation of grassland birds and something for all of you to think about. and in the u.s., it's our u.s. farm bill conservation programs. they provide cost-sharing for land owners, they conserve environmentally sensitive land and work to conserve not only agriculture land but wetland and grassland that is are components of that. next. they've been extremely successful for the conservation of birds but almost more importantly the regional impacts on air, water and healthy lands are critical on some of these boards. they have businesses, they have ngo's, state, federal agencies and support for these programs, for these joint ventures through the u.s. fish and wildlife service is critical for us. okay. and i will mention one last thing the state fish and

wildlife agencies have a funding source that goes to state wildlife action plans and the reason i want to mention this although i'm talking about policies separately, they're really all connected. so a good example is a species called the gold winged warbler, they put $200,000 into habitat protection through this grant program and leveraged about a million and a half dollars to do that with other partners. at the same time the conservation programs that i mentioned have developed conservation program for the species and are putting habitat on the ground and at the same time the neotropical conservation act is putting habitat on the ground in central america, nicaragua, and other countries on the nonbreeding habitat. the meanl that as the three countries and for birds we all need to work together to be successful in their con

serration. if you can go over this one. we had 26 conservation wildlife leaders come together. what we are asking congress to put $1.3 billion of current energy and mineral loyalties into the conservation of wildlife in the u.s. so next. so another thing i will mention here quickly, we have state and fish wildlife have investments and we have projects in yucatan peninsula that connect to missouri and tennessee. we have projects in the

chihuahuan grassland that connects the new mexico and wyoming, in the case. there are also from a bird perspective initiatives from although this is hemispheric it has 100 sites and within north america they are very important sites for shore birds that we are work to go engage additional stakeholders, whether it's businesses, local communities, ajitos in méxico. these are all partners in order to conserve shore birds throughout the hemisphere and throughout the continent, we need to work together on. next. and the final thing i will mention in this part is the business strategies that we are looking at developing. so you've kind of seen the science from the state of the bird's report, now, how do we take that science and say, where exactly can we have the most bang for our buck from a conservation perspective and

this concept came out of the national fish and wildlife foundation, and there board is very centric and what they said, we want to understand the risk from a business perspective of where we are going to put our money to have conservation success. that's what we are trying to do through the strategies. this one is for the atlantic flyway, the atlantic coast of the continent and others for habitats. next. i'm going to quickly mention ideas of partnership that is we have throughout the hemisphere. i think a lot of these can translate to north america also and charles touched on a few. one being coffee, so coffee good for wildlife and good for forest, therefore good for water shed protection, good for climate change mitigation and al good for local livelihood. tim hortons has partnership with

south america. cattle ranching, i know that some other partners are looking at how do you move this grass-fed beef market that's popular in north america right now to be bird friendly or wildlife friendly? this example is from the southern cone of south america. it developed a 1 million-dollar market for sustainable grass-fed, bird-friendly beef and the ranchers were the leaders of it. i think that's a great example of the way to go is to have the people on the land, the businesses, the local communities being the leaders. next. whether you've working with partners in south carolina, whether you're working with partners in california, in south

america, using certain techniques to make rice more friendly to wildlife and birds and creating a new business market, next. fisheries. we have had a lot of decline as charles mentioned but also install new technologies and agreements about timing of fisheries is a really important option for us to work together with the industry. next so this is my last slide and i wanted to give you with a few thoughts that many poll incomes this room that birds are embassadors, they unit us, bring us together, something we share as a continent. we want to use that science to be strategic in research allocation.

we think birds can be used as a galvanizer to address continental challenges. we also believe that we can use them as indicators and develop approaches that meet both social and economic needs. so i will leave you with that, thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> next, humberto, care to share some thoughts? >> good afternoon, everyone. i'm humberto berlanga. i work for a national commission for knowledge and use of diversity in méxico which is the focal point of information on biodiversity in my country.

it was created 25 years ago and has become leading institution in many aspects in terms of compiling, administrating and applying biodiversity information for many different purposes. my institution serves 111 different ministries in the country as well as any one in the society all the way to a school kid to a minister of energy or whatever. information about biodiversity. birds unit or make us think and work together and we have -- you have seen many good examples. i have here the spanish version of the document that you there. it was translated in three languages, english, spanish and

french for the people of three countries, that's joining our efforts to try to work together. i would like to share with you my personal experience on how we evolved to come up -- to be able to produce this type of document. it's not easy. it's not easy at all. now everybody today, everybody speaks about biodiversity but 20 years ago were very different, very, very different and when we were obligated to focus on biodiversity because we didn't have enough ph.d's, people specialized in addressing all the different groups of wildlife, flora, compared to what you have in the u.s. or canada it was very unbalanced. so our focus was from probably from 25 years ago, the beginning of the 90's to focus on biodiversity, act quickly and

develop a area system which is covered in 18% of the territory of méxico practically all the islands of méxico, for example and all the major ecosystems in the country. they are intend today create in order to create condition for species to move and to survive and to accomplish the biological cycles. i just wanted to give you a few examples of some of the difficulties that we have gone through in the history of collaboration among our three countries. when we started 20 years ago there was not even a map that we could use as a common ground for geographically understand a plan, what we wanted to do together. veghtation -- vegetation, there are many.

so we started to work using very interesting approach. the ecoregions of north america and we develop it had first conservation regions probably in the world. and it's a map. it's a map from us and we all did that and it's a practical tool that we use for beginning to organize our vision in the geographic scale. there were also the need or the interest of trying to replicate or see how we could use some of the u.s. and canadian experience in organizing the society to the joint ventures, which is something that we don't have down there and we invented a concept which was the alliances

and the idea was to have organization system that helped us to coordinate work from society ngo's, state agencies and federal government or international ngo's, so it was to help to create these organizations in méxico. many -- there are many like that but it's a different understanding on what their role and what type of the objective they can pursue. so we did -- there used to be a coordinator in the u.s. for quite some time and it was fun years, we were very active and, you know, insistent in trying to help our stakeholders to begin to think differently, which is basically what is more difficult to do when you work and plan

international or national at the continental level. how to change the people in order to begin to think differently or institutions, institutions evolved very slowly and it's hard for people to understand what we intend to do or if people understand the institution takes five years to really assume that change. anyway, we worked very hard for implementing alliance in méxico that was intended to be connected with the joint ventures in canada and the united states very much in the way. let me explain, connecting regions in the continent that share species. and that's where the role of the local community is very important and it's working. in some way it's working. it's working not the way we

imagine it, which is one big lesson. you might think, let's organize alliance here in méxico that's going to be connected with two giant ventures in the east of the united states and i don't know -- [inaudible] >> well, it's not happening exactly that way. we have those map that is we developed, the bcr maps and we have many other tools that we are applying right now, almost 20 years ago or 20 years after. the other example that i wanted to point out is how we came up with this thing because, i mean, basically it says very bad news, no? it's a diagnostic of what is happening, but talking about all birds approach it was like a

forbidden because the groups in the u.s. were very divided, the ones specialized in shore birds or in dogs or in land birds, so there's no other country in the world that can replicate that incredible organization and number of specialists and resources and everything. it's impossible. no country that can replicate that. but, i mean, the concern and the commitment of our agencies and the scientists and the people that is involved in bird conservation in the three countries of north america was the key for changing that -- that vision. i mean, that system. and eventually i remember many meetings where people really were perceiving the north america conservation, all birds habitat forever, no, sometimes like a threat because i mean, it

was a proposal that was intend today change -- intended to change the way we were working. i don't have time for developing science and institutions and organization and the strategies, i need to work with birds and that's the best way i can associate with my partners in canada and the united states for accelerating the process, generating knowledge to be applied for long-term conservation for north america. and it took time and it took a lot of meetings and a lot of resources and a lot of developments to really come up to where we are now. now everybody is sensitive and understands and thinks in terms of biodiversity but they are still working in their main focus and it was really not a threat to so we don't have 10

years of data of bird migratory in méxico. probably 120 years program. we don't have a bird program. why is there not a program in méxico? because we have not yet get into the point where the agencies understand that you need a banding program for generating information you need for making decisions. in the u.s. and canada, that information is generated and it's used for making decisions and regulations, which is very important. but thanks to that, now we have signed an agreement for cooperating for canada and u.s. helping méxico on our bird banding program, connected with

the ones we have in the north. but again, coming back to the question -- how we come up with this, where did we get the information, well, the first thing was we -- i mean, we were hesitating to use the methodology because some of the scientists in méxico were not very, how do you say it, comfortable the approach w the methodology that was proposed to come up with an assessment of the conservation start of the conservation of birds in america and it was a process of convincing people, including me, let me tell you, because i had been the coordinator in méxico for 15 years, 16 now. to take that approach and have a real -- a really good scientifically based idea of how birds are doing in our continent , in north america and it took

them about seven or eight years of worships inviting all the experts from different regions of méxico to participate in the dynamic, they had an opportunity to provide all the knowledge, all the data and all the experience to using a system evaluation, provide values, one interesting thing is that, i mean, when we started this as i mentioned the world was divided in shore birds and land birds but we decided to do all the birds at once. i mean, different from the u.s., land birds, the first group and then aquatic birds and then marine species and at the very end the ducks because they have other sources of data and finally we came up with a complete database, with an

isasment of the north american species. some are part of this process, birds that distribute tend to rank very high in the u.s. there's a few in arizona but it's it's so common but it has five in the u.s. and one in méxico. but we need -- we have to do the teach progress ceses in putting together databases and try to clean up this difference of perception and come up with a very strong and solid database, which is basically the -- just

in méxico we have the participation of more than 150 experts in birds and with total support of partners in canada and the u.s. and we come up with that data which is available for consultation by the public. when you read this, you will find state of the birds and you will have access to the database and if you're interesting in knowing about a specific species, you can take a look there. i would finish saying that during this last 16 to 20 years that we have been, you know, accelerating and improving the way we collaborate because we have learned a lot from each

other. now we have new visions and new challenges and i think we are better equipped for -- for trying to face some of the challenges that we are facing now. i mean, what are we going to do to -- to reverse, to stop and reverse what is happening with that set of the species? it's not only as charles mentioned, it's not only about migratory species, one of the things that changes is we started to try to change the perception and the understanding that our shore birds is not only the birds that migrate but the birds that are in our region, in our home, in our realm which is another small but very important change switch in our minds and charles also gave a very, very good example of this, endemic

species in yucatan, they interact with each other during the winter time while they spend the winter down there in méxico. understanding that and incorporate that into a vision to protecting the full life cycle of birds, where they breed, where they fly through and where they winter it's incredibly important specially if we want to provide solutions in the future for helping them to recover from many of the threats they are facing right now and they are serving as a canary in the coal mine. they are telling us we are doing something very wrong if we are about to lose one to three species in the next years. we need to activate the society

and stakeholders, find ways of facing these problems, empower people, i think, is going to be one of the key solutions in the short-term and science that has become valuable information as charles explained with the map that assimilates the distribution of species. we have more information than ever and we have better scientists and many more scientists in the three countries and the sensitivity to do things and to act in that direction with the participation of the cities, and that has become, i will fish with that a very important part of what we are doing in méxico and thank you also to the collaboration

with our partners, we are developing a very strong citizen science strategy for involving the local communities in assessing what is the status of the birds where they live and at the same time changes the perception of their territory, the people fall in love with the birds and they begin to be concerned about it. it changes everything and we are trying to use birds as i already mentioned, for example, if we change in a particular area, we can use birds to say if that is practice is having an impact the diversity or abundance of birds. so birds have very, very good indicators of that.

and it's a way to also convince and make understand some of the project managers, the planners, the economies, birds are incredible tool for assessing the impacts of our interventions in social and economic issues and i mean, try to put that together is helping those two doing things better, always in the context of collaboration of our three nations. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, humberto. so i would like to sort of give a concluding presentation. and i thought it might be interesting for some of you who are not perhaps deeply immersed in this to pull together some

information kind of -- and specially in the spirit of competitiveness and the north american region pulled together information on whatever you want to call it bird watching, kind of an economic -- economic course here in north america and so i pulled together a little bit of information from some of the literature that's out there on this stuff. unfortunately, or the way it works is there's quite a bit of information available from the u.s., sod goom information from canada and much less available for méxico and i think we will see more of this kind of analysis coming forward in the future. so focusing here on the u.s. where there's more information a wild life watching or bird watching is a very big business if you will here in the united states, these are some recent efforts from a 5-year study that's done, a study that's done

every five years with some very large numbers, the unestimate in the united states. i think most of that is birds. not all of it. qielt a bit of people who travel away from their homes, sometimes large differences. and people are spending over 50 billion u.s. a year on this -- on this kind of activity. a pie chart to show how the numbers break out. a lot of expenditures. if you look at the left pie chart, equipment, all that kind of stuff but a fair bid is relate today travel andor expenditures and so these generate in a lot of communities

all income and dollars to support economies. it varies region to region. it's a national past time, if you will. particularly a nonprofit world who are trying to raise funding. as you might expect, the sort of expenditures or participation is kind of skewed to people with higher incomes. it's both an opportunity and a challenge for us, i think, going forward oond if you break this

down to sort of trends, we see some very definite increasing trends in the united states and expenditures over time and we expect these troandz -- trends to increase as we go forward and they are interesting because other similar trends for some of the more traditional activities like hunting in particular are going downward at the same time. looking at similar data from canada, canadian related to nature activities and you can see the numbers are extremely high, three quarters, over half. a lot of as we see perhaps in the u.s., a lot of people are getting out there participating in these activities in canada.

a lot of canadians are spending a lot of time out in the activities, this is data or days spent on it. again, most of the time is spent near where people live but a sizable proportion involves travel to different parts of the country. so over 40 billion canadian. these are sizable expenditures on this type of activity with at least eye-balling it roughly in terms of spending on equipment and travel and things like that. again in canada much like the u.s., many local communities are deriving significant economic benefit from birding and nature-related tourism. and again similar to what we see

in the u.s., a lot of the spending is skewed towards people with higher relative incomes. in méxico again there's very little data about their available but we have at least one estimate that sort of bird watchers rather narrowly define spend over 23, almost $24 million u.s. in méxico in one year which is ten years ago and again we know this is only increased over time. but i think what is interesting, of course, is that as i'm sure all of you know, méxico is a major, major tourism for all kinds of things and the two biggest sources of tourist to méxico are the united states and canada and i think while we know a lot of people who are going to cancún or therefore the wildlife , not the birds but wildlife.

[laughter] >> inin fact, i was able to find that in 2009 it was the tenth most visited in the country in the world for tourism. there are fascinating things to be seen in méxico in the natural world so i included to the left, this is a shot of migrating hawks and vultures taking veracruz, méxico, humberto you might agree with me, i don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the rooftop of the hotel bienvenido, one of the best known bird-watching sites in the world because it's -- you can see the largest migration on

the planet passes through that area with something on exceptional days over a one million individual raptors pass through that one part of méxico, so if you want to see that, that's that. on the right that's a fabulous bird that i have never seen. the rose belly, beautiful bird but if you want to see this bird which many of us do not only in the u.s. and europe, you have to go to méxico and not only do you have to go to méxico, you have to go to a small part of chiapas or oaxaca to see this bird. this is what motivates a lot of us to spend some of these large quantities of money to do these things. so not to bore you with more numbers, these are some of the sources that i use. if you want to follow up with, this i recommend digging into this. in fact, this bottom one in the

u.s. is a very interesting. it's a gold mine of statistical information for those of you who are interested in that kind of activity. so that's all i'm going say. i think we will sit here and we will be happy to take any questions anyone has. i think there are microphones, might be easy. >> hi. thank you. thank you very much. good to see you. thank you all very much. this was really a terrific and interesting and i have one question just going from what humberto was saying towards the end of your talk, humberto, about birds serving as impact indicators, as canary in the coal mine and i was just wondering just your unscientific take on how often do ngo's and

government use bird can i -- centric. [inaudible conversations] >> that's very interesting. we didn't invent them in north america, some of the first ones were from the united king doll and australia and other places an they have great examples of using some of those indicators in what they call quality of life indicators, so in the uk, they use farmland or grassland birds as indicator of the health of farmland, agriculture and hence their quality of life. there are place that is do that at a country wide scale. i think it's probably rare and i think there are others, other examples where we have more

local examples of where people are doing that from a quality of life or showing that a wetland is healthy by the number of birds it has as an indicator. anyone else want to add? >> i will add to that, canada has canadian environmental indicators and two are based specifically on birds. have those indicators driven policy, probably not yet but they are part of the suite and as we are sort of relatively new so i'm not sure that indicators are being watched the same way as economic. so there's still a lot of work needed on that. birds aren't perfect indicators. the advantage of birds, some birds are actually not that sensitive habitat change compare today other wildlife but they have two or three big assets, the biggest one by far is that

there's lots of people watch birds so we have a huge database. so even if they're not a perfect indicator, even if there are butterflies that disappear before, we can keep a lot of diversity if we can keep birds and we can get data from birds and attention from birds which is the other piece of it. they are widely used in sort of assessments of is this forestry -- are we protecting the diversity. people tend to use birds as indicators. doesn't mean everything else is perfect but if we are keeping the birds, we are keeping a good chunk of the rest of the ecosystem functioning. so it's used a little bit in the uk driving policy. foreign policy is being driven by the indicators. in canada, i don't think it's driving policy yet but, of course, that's where we wanting to. we want people to look at these indicators and when the indicator declines realize that this is something that they

should take action to try and increase the indicator. >> in méxico like a very specific example in the context of the corridor, the chapter of méxico which cover from central méxico to the south, there's another corridor associated which is in central america which is a very biodiverse area, region, we are applying -- there's a model of intervention in order to improve the livelihoods of people and the health of the environment by improving the way produce, let's say timber, let's say honey, coffee, let's say acoa or provide services such ecotourism. what we have been working very hard in the last few years is try to incorporate system of evaluation of the response of

birds to those interventions. i mean, what our birds are good response when i assess the change in practice, for example, coffee. okay, it's almost time for that maybe in a few years. you have a baseline. it's not rocket science and it's very easy to understand for the campesinos, the people that work in the field. ..

that are being imposed in order to help create and maintain connectivity in areas in protected areas in the southwest of mexico. it's in some ways an experiment and eventually we would like to have like a more formal approach to that. >> thank you very much. i'm a former salvadoran diplomat. it's faceted. under for more personal interest in the topic your question for

charles francis is, i'm curious when is the next one to come out? that's one. how important, how difficult will it be to include central america or at least let's say the northern triangle, into this? if i could ask debra, commercial. -- humberto. i wonder at the risk of you being mexican and talk about central america and, i would be curious your assessment of where things are in central america by comparison to where you were 15, 16 years ago. and to debra, how could one

incorporate more, i understand there's some activity, central america, northern triangle into some of these u.s. funded government, federally funded programs. >> when will the next one come out is an interesting question. since been a very lively debate on that yesterday. the question is, how often do we need them? how valuable are these reports. there are two pieces to the. one is how often do you update the debated -- database guide and the others often to take the effort and time and trouble need to generate one of these reports for distribution. i would say we would not do another one for at least five years. five years would strength as a potential interval. we haven't decided on the. that was a debate because there's a different report done in canada and in u.s. we have done one in candidate.

they've done to this type in u.s. but several in between as well looking at the trends, data we can do for mexico because we don't have long-term monitoring. again we've got the same debate. generating these reports from time to time which we think is that will for attracting attention bringing in the awareness as an indicator. some of these things don't change that quickly. there's no point in calculating every year. bird populations just don't respond that fast in less it's built into a policy used for something which case we can do something quickly. i think we might do another one in perhaps five years. whether it's a joint one or how we will do that hasn't been decided yet. bringing in central america, the protest upgrading the database for some report is actually underway by the thought about whether to do the port, i don't know if there's been much discussion. but i think humberto has been

involved in his experience of learning how to take historic american sort of us-based methodology into mexico has worked very closely with the rocky mount observatory which was leaving this exercise to help them expand into central america. >> that has been another fantastic lesson. our partners with the u.s. and in canada, in someway take our advice in what was the best way to make sure that a process of developing assessment of the population of parts of central america and the species could be more better done. we were very interested and particularly from costa rica. we were insistent involving the local authorities in order to to

create like the involvement end of the connection and the commitment of the local authorities, including the group, they have a specific group for diversity a few years ago. to at least provide a blessing or a framework for us to help organize their own assessment, based on our experience, which helps a lot because we, for example, translates, i mean, the rules for assessment into spanish. was very easy to share with the world. our friends. and that detail as in its principles, the aim in the interest of expanding what we expanding or extending or sharon or involving other countries in the continent. central america is a very important area for us, the three of us.

it was very easy. we have done three workshops so far. bird conservancy of the rockies. sorry, the name changed. they are the host. they work for this. we have received support from many institutions, mainly -- >> u.s. fish and wildlife service. >> the one state agency speak with the missouri department of conservation. >> they have helped with resources. we have had one in panama, one in costa rica and one in nicaragua. next year w we're going to have the final one in honduras. so the good part, the governments are involved. it's a process that is -- it is

assessment. not something imported. methodology yes, but they have done this, not we, canadian, u.s. or mexican. it was their expertise and solar. that's important because it generates ownership. they perceive there is a lot of things they can do with that information, even regulations. the last part of this is finally we have a database that is shared, using the same methodology from animal to northern canada. i hope i answered your question. >> i might just have something quickly on the international component, in the sense our leaders have challenged us through the recent meeting, part of that thing on the americas was developing a vision for bird conservation for the next 100 years. of course, resort hope they might say something like that. now they have said it, now we

have to deliver. that will not involve just u.s., canada, mexico. that magnolia warp stops in the yucatán but many canadian species don't stop there. they keep going. we need to work throughout the hemisphere for conserving birds even if you only care and, of course, i hope we care about more than that but if we only care about the ones the conduct of u.s. and canada every year, we need to protect the habitats elsewhere. we are working towards hemispheric interactions and policies and cooperation. it's going to take a while. it's challenging because as humberto said, we can't just come down and tell them what to do. we have to work with them actually get them to tell us how to work in the country and how to conserve the birds there. we need to work towards getting the dialogue and conversation. >> i know you guys are probably running out of time but i will quickly answer your question. so i think from a u.s.

perspective, the neotropical migratory conservation act that he mentioned, any that funding can be spent in central america, south america, the caribbean. there are many projects throughout central america that are already happening. we also, major highway southern wings program for a good example with an new drop act and the southern wings from the state fish and wildlife agencies are working together is in guatemala where we've been helping an organization that is implementing a landscape conservation strategy on the caribbean coast of guatemala, and we've been helping them work on the from our bird perspective and why they're doing it is for watershed protection, and they are both amphibian and endemic bird species. come together when you have a shared ago i guess. those funds are able to be used and we continue to try to reach out to partners both government

and ngo to make sure people know that they can apply for those grants. editing also having conversations with groups like this and talking about how you can help us support policies in the u.s. that helped work on providing funding outside of the united states, whether it support from ambassadors, support from centers like the wilson center. to say we want to send tax dollars outside of the country. but there's a good reason to do that. we should these species. from our perspective bringing people together is even moves into the security realm where you're creating goodwill and join together for a common cause, whether that's watershed protection or birds. [inaudible]

>> my name is monica. i'm with the united nations vibrant program. thank you for sharing your information and knowledge appear today. actually following up and it charles is speaking about, some of the things we're trying to do working with our partners in canada and the u.s. and some of the other countries in south america is using the arctic council as an institutional mechanism to help advance the arctic migratory bird initiative. with canada's leadership we have really come some ways in developing, there's a work plan and there's an implementation strategy. i believe that what has gone up to you, humberto, to invite your engagement as well from mexico, this initiative. i guess one of the questions, are there sufficient institutional mechanisms in place to enable the kind of collaboration we are talking about that sort of the