the bottom line, or top line as we laid out the report, is that 37% of the species, nearly 40% of the species has serious conservation concerns. that could be major population declines. it could be threats that imply there is ongoing decline. it happens to be high on several different factors to get on the watch list. not only do they have large declines, but they have restricted ranges and threats as well. these are species we need to be concerned about some of the species are already listed as endangered. this is so we do not have to take what we have the e.r. response which is what the endangered species act is. a lot of work for trying to recover species, and for 430 species could be a challenge. how did that break down?

you can get the details from the report. it will highlight the key groups, and the top two groups oceans and tropical and subtropical forests were more than half of the species of concern. if we look at the next ones, coast, arid lands, granted, not a lot of species are on the list, but some are showing some decline. to highlight what we have done in this report is not just where are the problems, but what are some of the key solutions we need to work on. not all of these solutions are easy. if they were easy, we might have done them already. section one, going on best things that are working that we can continue, and a section

that challenges -- that is ok. for example, seabirds, these are birds that spend much of their life at sea, but nest on the water. many of the seabirds nest on islands. one of the challenges on islands are invasive species. somebody has introduced something to an island somewhere and make these seabirds vulnerable. in a number of areas where seabirds are nesting there have been successful eradication programs to get rid of the rats. we know they can work. they are not cheap. this is an area we can continue to develop. marine protected areas -- sorry. no. marine protected areas are

something we have been starting to work on. one of the things you will see is most of our actions -- and not just birds, but the environment and ultimately the benefit people. areas will affect the food base for these seabirds from ocean pollution, plastics, there are gazillions of tons of plastic floating around the oceans, and many fish, including seabirds, turtles, eat those, mistaking them for food, and they can -- it's a simple fishers, two components from the bird perspective, fisheries that do not catch birds. a lot of albatrosses drown. this practices are getting them used widely, not only in our waters, but internationally, and it will benefit the birds for food supply, and benefit all of us.

next. we talk about tropical forests. that is an issue for mexico because they have most of the tropical forest. what this map shows is mexican birds are also our birds because that the magnolia warbler is where those areas are migrated to, many of them are coming from canada across the boreal forests, but that relationship reads from one province to the other, end of canada to the other, winters in that little area in the yucatán peninsula. we have several million birds there in the winter. they are just as -- we care about those tropical forest birds because many of them are

also canadian boreal forest birds. next. i do not think -- i am not sure this is going to show well. i will talk about it as it goes. there is some glowing down there. this is an interesting matchup. we need to work on the graphic colors. this will slowly expand north and see these grays spreading out here. this is now may, this is late may. we are working into june, and you see where all these birds are breeding, red and white. what is interesting is this map was generated by birdwatchers. since people who go surveying, they write down what they see every day, they get to a giant bird database and with several billion hours of computer processing time, they have taken hundreds of thousands of observations and been able to generate this list and choose how that species migrate up

through and back again. there is a series of these at our website. they are rather fun to look at. i was not sure whether to see -- it highlights the power of what we call citizen science. all those birders collecting the data are the ones who will help us with conservation. working the tropics is one of the challenges, and the key thing is working with people. the pressure on these forests is the land use and the development, and if the people have healthy, happy livelihoods and one that benefit from it take advantage of these natural forests, then they will protect the forest for themselves and in the process protect the forests for the birds. the key to this conversation is making it relevant to people's lives. we have protected areas.

it is about 20%, but we need to look after those protected areas. we do not want to have 20% of the landscape good for birds would we want working landscapes where people work and live and eat and feed and work can support the diversity of birds through sustainable forestry, timber harvesting, development. a lot of people like to go and watch birds. that can help protect their habitats. the other area i want to focus on, there are several others of concern, grasslands. grasslands are important for my transnational perspective because this map just where many of the breeding birds in

canada winter in mexico. there are 20% of grassland birds that are found only in north america. these grasslands are threatened in all parts of the range. if we look in the chihuahuan desert, central mexico, we look at birds that will go only to the chihuahua, and the challenge is a lack of wintering habitat which means they do not survive. it is important have breeding habitats where birds can raise their young, but if they do not come back again, we will have a population challenge. the challenge with grasslands -- next slide -- is working with people. what the real solutions are is getting people to understand the consequences of their action. if you take a pastureland that we use for rearing cattle, convert it to soybeans, it has no value for birds, and in

these dry desert areas, it will not have value for birds across because they need to irrigate. it is bad in long-term. it is bad for the society, bad for birds in the long-term, and we need to work on policies that support what we call sustainable farming. many of these grassland birds grew up in an area where there are hundreds of millions of bison. they can work in a landscape of cattle and bison. it helps to support. a final slide but -- basically the bottom line we come out with is if it is good for people in terms of the long-term healthy land and water, these are sustainable things for birds and for people. thank you.

mr. mehlman: we will save questions for the end until we can ask the panel together. i think, deb, you are next. >> it is still installing. it may be ready before she is done. ms. hahn: thank you. good afternoon. i am deb hahn. i work with the association of wildlife agencies, which serves as a force for territorial fish and wildlife agencies.

the 50 u.s. wildlife agencies are members of our associations as well as the canadian provinces. there are also agencies that work on conservation, canadian wildlife service is also members, also with ngo's including some in the room. charles got into some of the science, and i was asked to start to move the science towards what does it mean in the three countries, what does it mean from business practice standpoint, from a policy standpoint. we have had 100 years of implementation of the migratory bird treaty act. we had amazing success. but from a conservation community standpoint, we are saying, what do we have to do differently in the next hundred years so we can ensure that people, biodiversity, which for us is birds, are an important part of that, and that business

thrives? how do we make that happen for the next hundred years? this is all connected, and you do not need to talk only about birds. even talk about healthy land, air, water, and i would argue that long-term economic growth businesses are not counter to having the land, air, water. and the birds are indicators of the health of these areas. so what we need are the policies in the business practices that embrace this in order to make that a reality. next. so i will touch base on a few policy opportunities that are somewhat u.s.-centric but include conservation in canada and mexico. very important to us and coming out of this report is an act that it's administrated by the u.s. fish and wildlife service.

it is critical funding serve for the neotropical migrants threat in the western hemisphere. we have about $3.5 million to about $5.5 million appropriated by the u.s. congress each year and a large amount of data that have gone to the program, and we had a number of projects in canada, mexico, and the u.s. uniting three countries. another one that is north american focus is the wetlands conservation act, another successful act has put billions on the ground in canada, mexico, and the u.s. also important funding here in the u.s. with our congress. next. this is a u.s.-only program, but charles brought up

grasslands, and there are policies within canada and mexico that i am not an expert on, but i know are very important to the conservation of grassland birds, and something for all of you to think about. in the u.s., it is our u.s. farm bill conservation programs. these programs provide cost-sharing, can serve environmentally sensitive land and work to conserve not agricultural land, but wetlands and grasslands that are components of that. next. in north america we have migratory bird joint ventures, created in 1986. they have been extremely successful partnerships for the conservation of birds, but they are the regional impact on air water, and healthy land. on some of these boards have businesses, ngo's, state and federal agencies, and support for these programs is critical for us. next.

i will mention one last thing, the state fish and wildlife agencies have a funding source that goes to state wildlife action plans. the reason i want to mention this is although i am talking about the policies separately, they are really all connected. a good example is a gold winged warbler, and in pennsylvania they have put $200,000 into habitat protection for this species through this grant program, and i have leveraged about $1.5 million to do that with other partners. at the same time the farm bill conservation programs i mentioned have developed a conservation program for the species and are putting habitats on the ground, and at the same time, the neotropical migratory bird conservation act is putting habitat on the ground in central america, nicaragua, and other countries on their nonbreeding habitat. this message that as our three countries and for birds, we

need to work together to be successful in their conservation. next. if you could just go one more, i will skim over this one. we have a blue-ribbon panel in the u.s. that is looking to increase the level of wildlife funding. we had 26 conservation and wildlife and business leaders in the u.s. come together. what we are doing right now is asking the u.s. congress to put $1.3 billion of current energy and mineral royalties into the conservation of wildlife in the u.s. next, another thing i will mention is we have some state fish and wildlife agency investment, which is in some ways to help match the investment made by our federal partners. we have projects in the yucatán peninsula that connect to the state of missouri and the state of tennessee. we have projects in the

chihuahuan desert grasslands are there is an initiative that has over 100 sites throughout the hemisphere, and within north america, there are very important sites for shorebirds that we are working to engage additional stakeholders, whether businesses, local communities, you name it. these are all partners that to conserve shorebirds throughout the hemisphere and throughout the continent, we need to work together on. next. in the final thing i will mention in this part is that business strategies we looking at developing. you have seen the signs from "the state of the birds" report. how do we take that science and

say, where exactly can we have the most bang for our buck from a conservation perspective? this concept came out of the national fish and wildlife federation, and therefore is very business centric, and they said we want to understand the risk or make business perspectives on where we are going to put our money at conservation success, and that is what we're trying to do to these strategies. this is for the atlantic flyway for the atlantic hosts of the continent. i will quickly mention some of the ideas of partnerships that we have throughout the hemisphere. a lot of these can translate the north america also. charles touched on a few, one being coffee. shade-grown coffee, good for wildlife, good for forest. they are good for what percent protection, good for climate change mitigation, and also good for local livelihood. tim hortons in canada has a

strong partnership with farmers in central america on shade-grown coffee. next. cattle ranching. i know national audubon and some other partners are looking at how do you move this grass-fed beef market that is very popular in north america right now to also be bird friendly or wildlife friendly? this example is from the southern cone of south america and it is an initiative that has developed a $1 million market for sustainable grass-fed bird-friendly beef in the ranches participating were the leaders. that is a great example of the way to go, to the people on the land, the businesses, the local communities being the leaders. next. rice and other great examples, whether you're working with partners in south carolina california, in south america,

using certain techniques to make rice more friendly to wildlife, more friendly to birds, and creating a new business market. next. fisheries. as charles mentioned, we have had a lot of decline in our seabirds, so working with industry to help maintain fisheries, but also install new technologies and have cooperative agreements about timing of fisheries is really important options for us to work together with the industry. next. this is my last slide, and i wanted to leave you with a few thoughts that many folks in the room, not just myself, been talking about, the fact that birds are ambassadors. the unite has, bring us together. they are something we share as a continent. we have a lot of science in the bird community. we will do use that science to

be strategic in our resource allocation to enjoy the best return on our conservation investment. we think birds can be used as a galvanized or to address continental challenges and engaged a diverse stakeholder -- a group of stakeholders and partners. we believe we can use them as indicators and develop approaches that meet social and economic needs. i will leave you with that. thank you. mr. mehlman: next, humberto, care to share with us? mr. berlanga: good afternoon. i am humberto berlanga. i work on the national commission of national biodiversity in mexico.

it was created 25 years ago, and has become a leading institution in terms of compiling, administrating, and applying biodiversity information. my institution serves 11 different ministries in the country as well as in the civil society, to the minister of energy giving out information about biodiversity. there were very good things said at the end, how we can work together, and you have seen good examples. i have the spanish version of the document you have there, transposed in three languages, french, spanish, and english

for the people in our three countries, and that is a demonstration of how we are joining our efforts to try to work together, but 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 is not easy at all. now everybody today, everybody speaks, but there were 20 years ago things were very different. where we in mexico were obligated to focus on biodiversity because we did not have enough people to specialize in addressing all the different groups of wildlife, flora, species compared to what you have any u.s. or developments in candidate, it was very unbalanced. so our focus was from the 25 years ago, beginning of the 1990's, the focus on

biodiversity to protect an ecosystem government that is covering now 18% in mexico major islands, and other major ecosystems in the country, and now we're thinking about other things such as corridors that allow species to migrate and thrive. i want to give you examples of the difficulties we've gone through in the history of collaboration in our three countries. when we started 20 years ago there was not a map that we could use as a common ground for geographically understanding or plan what we wanted to do together. vegetation types, there are many. what is a good one that we can

use to really understand -- using our only scientific development, and why they should be our concern. so we started to work in using an interesting approach. it was the regions of north america, and we developed the first set of conservation regions in the world. and it is a map. it is from us. we all did that. it is a practical tool use to beginning to organize our vision in the geographic scale. there were also the need for the interest of trying to replicate to see how we could use some of the u.s. and canadian experience in organizing society through the joint ventures, which is something we do not have down there. we invented a concept that was

a -- alliance, and it was to have an analogous organizations that would help to coordinate work from the society, ngo's state agencies, federal government, international, so it was to help create these organizations in mexico. it is a different understanding on what their role and what type of objectives that they can pursue. there used to be a coordinator in the u.s. for some time, and those were very fond years, and we were very active and very consistent 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 your day. international, trinational, how to change people to get them to think differently or institutions. institutions change very slowly, and people do not understand what we intend to do. it takes five years to assume that change, no? we work very hard for implementing the alliance in mexico which is intended to be connected with the joint ventures in canada and the united states, very much in the way that was explained connecting regions on the continent that your species. that is the role of the local communities which is very important, and it is working.

in so many ways it is working. it is working not the way we imagined that it would. you might say, there is an alliance that appeared that is going to be connected to two giant ventures in the east of the united states -- i do not know. it is not happening exactly that way, but it is happening. there are now collaborations because we have those maps that we developed, the regional maps, and we have many other tools that we are applying right now from 20 years ago -- or 20 years after. the other example of wanted to point out is how we came up with these things, because, i mean, basically it says very bad news, no? it is a diagnostic of is happening. talking about the birds approach, it was like a theme,

it was almost forbidden because the groups in the u.s. were divided, whether they specialize in shorebirds or in land birds, there is no other country in the world that can replicate that between organizations and the number of specialists and resources and everything. it is impossible. the concern and the commitment of our agencies and the scientists and the people involved in bird conservation in the three countries of north america was the key for changing that vision, i mean that system. i remember many meetings where people were proceeding with the north american conservation initiative, sometimes like a threat, because a proposal that was intended to change the way

we were working -- and we were obligated to focus on biodiversity, so we did not have time for developing institutions and organizations and studies for shorebirds -- we needed to work with birds. and that is the best way i can associate with my partners in canada and the united states are accelerating the process of generating knowledge. it took time and it took a lot of meetings and a lot of resources and a lot of the elements to come up to where we are. now everybody understands and thinks in terms of biodiversity, but they are still working in their main focus, so it was really not a threat to try to come up with a

more integrated vision or what was needed in conservation in the context of biodiversity. we do not have 100 years of data of bird migration in mexico. 100 years in canada and 120 years of bird programs in the united states, and why is there not a bird banding program in mexico? we have yet to get to the point where the agencies understand that you need a banding program for getting the information you need for making decisions. in the u.s. and canada, that information is generated and it is used for making decisions which is very important. but now we have a signed agreement for cooperating, for canada, the u.s., and mexico to develop our bird banding

program. but coming back to the question of how we came up with this we love information. the first thing was -- we were hesitating to use it, because some scientists in mexico were not comfortable with the approach, with the methodology that was proposed to come up with an assessment of the conservation status of the birds of north america. and it was like a process for confusing people, including me let me tell you, because i have been a coordinator in mexico for 15 years now. we did take that approach, to have like a real good scientifically based idea of how birds are doing in our continent, in north america,

and it took them about seven or eight years, inviting all the experts in mexico to participate, so they had the opportunity to provide all their knowledge and all their experience through using a system of -- provided the values we needed to study mexican birds. one of the things they have seen when we started these -- the world was divided -- shorebirds, land birds -- but we decided to do all the birds at once, different from the u.s., which was made of land birds, and then the first group, and then aquatic birds, marine species, and at the very end the ducks. so we have other sources of

data, and we had come up with a database of north america's species. some of this was difficult because, for example, birds that the district staff is the south of the u.s., are ranked very high in the u.s., because there are a few registers in arizona. it is so common, but it had five of a type seen in southern u.s. we helped to do this teaching process for trying to clean up this different perception of the matter and come up with a very strong and solid database

which is the basis of this document. another tool in common that was developed by our best scientists and administrators, people from the government, and in mexico we have the participation of more than 150 experts in birds, and we are supported with those in canada and the u.s., and -- when you read this you will find the state of the birds, and that you will have access to the database. if you are interested in knowing about what is going on with a specific species, you can take a look there. i will finish with saying that during this last 16 or 20 years, we have been accelerating and improving the way we collaborate, because we

have learned a lot from each other. now we have new visions and new challenges, but i think we are better equipped for trying to face some of the challenges that we are facing. what are we going to do to reverse, to stop and reverse what is happening with that set of species? it is not only about species. one of the things that changes is we started to try to change the perception and the understanding that our shorebirds is not only the birds that migrate, but these are birds that are in our region, that are in our home our real, but any important change suites in our minds. very good example of this,

endemic species in yucatán that this part of the habitat that is shared with another one that winters there, and they interact with each other during the wintertime, where they spend the winter in mexico. an understanding that to incorporate that into a vision for protecting the full lifecycle of birds, where they breed, where they fly through, to make solutions for the future for the challenges they are facing now, and they are the canary in the coal mine, right? they are telling us something. there is something we are doing very wrong if we are about to lose one out of three species in the next few years.

so we need to activate in the society, we need to work with the stakeholders come to find other ways of facing these problems, and empowering the people be one of the keys, and citizen science that has become a major force for generating invaluable information, which i shall explain with that map that simulates the species. we have more information than ever. we have veteran scientists and many more scientists in the three countries, and the sensitivity to do things and to act in a direction, with the participation of the -- and that has become -- i will finish with that -- and thanks

to the collaboration with our partners, we are developing in conabio a very strong strategy for involving communities in assessing what is the status of the birds, where they live, and at the same time changes the perception of their territory. that people fall in love with the birds and they begin to be concerned about them. that changes everything. that changes everything. we're trying to use time as indicators, as was mentioned for example, if we change the way we produce -- in a particular area, we can use birds to say, if that is a sustainable practice is having an impact on the diversity or hundreds of birds.

birds are good indicators of that. it is a way to also to make understand some of the project managers, the planners, the economies that birds are an incredible fool for assessing the impacts of our interventions in social and economic issues. trying to put that together is helping us to doing things better, always in the context of the collaboration of our three nations. thank you very much.

mr. mehlman: thank you humberto. i would like to give a concluding presentation. and i thought it might be interesting for some of you not as deeply immersed in this to pull together some information kind of on -- and especially in the spirit of competitiveness in the north american region to pull together some information on what you want to call it, birds, birdwatching as a kind of an economic force here in north america. so i pulled together a bit of information from some of the literature that is out there on this stuff. unfortunately, or the way it works, there is quite a bit of information available from the u.s., some good information available from canada, and much less available for mexico. i think we will see more of this kind of analysis in the future. birdwatching is a big business here in the united states.

these are some recent efforts from a five-year study that was done on that with some large estimate that has more than 70 million people in the united states engaged in some form of wildlife watching. most of that is birds. a lot of it is around where we live in their houses quite a bit of it are people who travel away from their homes, sometimes large differences. the estimate this study comes up with is large, that people are spending over $50 billion u.s. a year on this kind of activity. these are two pie charts below to show how these numbers break out. you will see a lot of the expenditures, if you look at the left-hand pie chart, equipment, binoculars, cameras, tripods, and a fair bit is related to travel and other expenditures.

a fair amount is related to travel in other expenditures. in a lot of communities to generate income and dollars support local economies. again, if you look at this sort of by where it is distributed in the u.s., people are going different places, region to region, but it's still pretty high pretty much all over the country. it's just a national -- national pastime, if you will. and then another thing, of course, that interested a lot of us, particularly in the nonprofit world trying to raise funding, as you might expect these sort of expenditures where the participation is skewed to people with higher incomes? that's both an opportunity and challenge for us, i think, going forward.

and then if you kind of break this out in terms of trends, these surveys are done every five years. some of this, very interesting particularly on the right. we have increasing trend in the united states in expenditures over time. we expect these to increase as we go forward. they are very 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 some generally similar data from canada, i think we see a lot of similar stuff. this is a percentage of canadians taking part in nature related activities of some kinds. the numbers are very high. a lot of, as we see in the u.s., a lot of people are getting out there and participating in these activities in canada.

again, similarly, a lot of canadians are's ending a lot of time out there in these activities. this is data on days spent on it. most of the time is spent where people live, but a sizable portion does involve travel to different parts of the country. summaries here. it's a quite sizable expenditure, over 40 billion dollars canadian annually being spent on these activities. again, these are sizable expenditures of this type of activity. at least eyeballing it, roughly similar breakdowns in terms of spending on equipment and travel and things like that. again, in canada, much like the u.s., local communities are deriving significant economic and if it from nature related tourism. similar to what we see in the

u.s., a lot of this spending is skewed towards people with higher relative incomes. mexico, again, there is very little big data out there. but we do have an estimate that birdwatchers spend over $23 million, almost $24 million in u.s. and mexico in one year. we know that this has only increased over time. i think that what is of course interesting is that, as i'm sure all of you know, mexico is a major, major tourism hub for all things and the tool biggest tourist resources are the united states and canada. we know a lot of people who are going there for the wildlife. not the birds. it's true that people are going

there for its natural riches of all kinds. in fact i was able to find that in 2009 it was the 10th most visited in the country -- in the world for tourism. giving you a flavor if you are not as into this is some of us there are fascinating things to be seen in mexico in the natural world. i included two samples. the picture on the left looks like a bunch of black dots in the sky but this is actually a shot of migrating hawks and vultures. humberto, you might agree with me, i don't think it is exaggeration to say that the rooftop of the hotel the end the neato -- bien venido is one of the best birdwatching sites in the world. passing through that area with

exceptional days over one million individual raptors passing through that one part of mexico. on the right this is a fabulous bird that i've never seen. rosie does bunting. many of us want to see this and if you do, you have to go to mexico. not only that, you have to go to a small part of oaxaca. we are spending large quantities of money to do these things. not to bore you with more numbers, but these are the sources are used -- sources i

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

do ngo's and government's use bird centric indicators as impact indicators of interventions? >> that's a really interesting question. adding a couple that i know, these bird reports, we didn't invent them in north america. some of the first ones were from the united kingdom, australia, and other places. they have great examples of using some of those indicators and what they call quality-of-life indicators. in the u.k. they use their farmland or grassland birds as indicators of the health of their farmland, agriculture, and their quality of life. there are places that do that on a countrywide scale, it's probably rare. they have other examples where

there are 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? >> canada has sustainability indicators that are based specifically on birds. have they driven policy? probably not yet. but they are part of the suite. we are relatively new at that kind of indicator, so i'm not sure that they are being watched the same way that economic indicators are. if the economy drops, there's a huge concern. if the environmental quality indicators drop, i don't think there's as much attention paid. birds are not perfect indicators. some are not sensitive to habitat change compared to other wildlife, but they have two or three big assets.

the biggest lie far is that lots of people watch birds. so we have a huge database to work from. even if they are not a perfect indicator, even if some butterflies might disappear for the birds do, or rare insects, we can keep a lot of diversity and we can get data for birds and attention for birds, which is the other piece of it. they are widely used in sort of assessment stuff. protecting diversity, people tend to use them as indicators. doesn't mean that everything else is perfect, but if we are keeping the birds we are keeping a chunk of the ecosystem. in the u.k. it is actually driving policy. farm policy is being driven by these indicators. in canada i don't think it's driving policy yet, but of course that's where we want to go. when the indicator declines, we

want people to realize that this is something that they should take action on to increase the indicator. humberto: we have a specific example in mexico, in the chapter of mexico that covers the mesoamerican part, there's another corridor associated with central america which is very diverse and we are applying -- there is a model for intervention to improve on the idea of help by improving the way that produce -- but sate timber, honey, coffee, all providing some services like ecotourism. what we have been working on very hard in the last few years is a way to incorporate a system of evaluation of the response of birds to those interventions.

by level of response, when i assess a change in group practice -- for example talking about coffee, time for that is maybe a few years. you have maybe a baseline. it's not rocket science. it's very easy to understand for the people that work in the field. that helps to connect to -- what is the status of our birds here? if you modify a practice into a more sustainable one with involvement to assess using natural history and knowledge, as you monitor the populations

see how the birds react to that change. well, we started a few years ago and we have a troop of more than 350 who are trained in the equipped working in 11 states, trying to help us to assess the impact of sustainable practices that are being imposed in order to help create and maintain connectivity between protected areas in the southwest of mexico. it is in some way and experiment, to have like a more formal approach to it. >> thank you very much. my name is alexander, former salvatori and diplomat -- salvadorian diplomat.

the question for charles francis is -- i'm curious, when is the next one going to come out? that is 1a. 1b is -- how difficult would it be to include central america -- or at least the northern triangle -- into this? if i could ask deborah in particular, and humberto, it was interesting to hear what it was like 15, 16 years ago. i wonder, at the risk of you being mexican and talking about the central americans, i would be interested to hear your assessment of where things are in central america by comparison to where you were 15, second -- 16 years ago. that is 2a.

2b, deborah, how could one incorporate more? i understand that there are some of these activities in the triangle to fund these u.s. government, federally funded programs. charles: we had a lively debate on when the next one is coming out yesterday. the question is, how often do we need them? excuse me, sorry. there are two pieces to that. one, how often we update the database behind it. the other is how often we take the trouble and time to generate one of these reports for distribution. i would say that we would not do another one for at least five years. we haven't decided on that. there was also a debate because there was a different report in canada.

they have done two of this type in the u.s., but several in between as well, looking at the trends of data we can do for mexico because we don't have a long-term monitoring. generating these reports from time to time we think is very valuable for attracting attention in bringing in the awareness as an indicator. you know, some of these things don't change that quickly. bird populations just don't respond every year, unless it's built into a policy use, in which case we could do some quickly. so i think we might do another one in perhaps five years? whether it is a joint one or how we do that, it hasn't been decided yet. bringing in central america, the protest of creating the database is actually underway.

as to whether to do the report i don't think is that much discussion. i think that humberto has been involved, in his experience, to take his north american and us-based methodology into mexico and it has worked closely with the rocky mountain observatory, which was leading this exercise. i will actually punt that one part two humberto -- to humberto as well. humberto: the prime minister in some way took our advice as to what the best way was to make sure that the process of developing assessment of the population of the central american species could be more -- more better done. particularly from costa rica. we were insistent in involving

the local authorities in order to create the involvement, connection, and commitment of the local authorities. they had this specific group 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. for example that translates with the rules and was able to be easily shared with the world, our friends. in its principles, there is a name and interest in explaining the expansion or shedding of the continent. central america is an important area for the three of us.

that is shared with mexico. we have done three workshops so far. the conservancy of the rockies? sorry, the name changed. they work for this. you have seen support from many of these institutions. humberto: u.s. -- deborah: u.s. fish and wildlife service? the missouri department of conservation? humberto: they have handled resources for workshops. we have had one in panama, costa rica, and nicaragua. this year we will have the final one in honduras. the governments are involved.

it's a process that is there. it is their assessment. they have done this. not we. we didn't expect this, and so on. ownership. they perceive a lot of things that they gather with that information. even circulations. the last part of this is that finally we have a database we can share. using the same methodology from panama to work to northern canada. i hope i answered your question. >> coming quickly on the international component, in a sense our leaders have challenged us in that recent meeting. part of it was about developing for conservation over the next 100 years.

we sort of hoped they might say something like that. now they hope -- now we hope they can deliver. that would not involve just u.s., canada, and mexico. many of the canadian species don't stop there. they keep going. we are working throughout the hemisphere. of course, i hope we care about more than that, but if we only care about the ones coming to the u.s. and canada every year we definitely need to protect their habitats elsewhere. we are definitely working towards hemispheric policy and cooperation. it's going to take a while, it's challenging. as humberto said, we can't just come down and tell them what to do. we have to work with them as they tell us how to conserve the birds there. we need to work towards getting that dialogue and conversation. deborah: i know you guys are running out of time. i will quickly answer your questions.

from a u.s. perspective, the neotropical migratory conservation act that i mentioned, any of that funding can be spent in south america, central america, the caribbean. there are many projects throughout central america already happening. as i mentioned, we also have a kind of southern wings program. the state fish wildlife agencies are working together, where we have been helping an organization that is implementing a landscape conservation strategy on the caribbean coast and we have been helping them to work on that from our bird perspective. why they are doing it is watershed protection for the boat, amphibian, and endemic word species. coming together where we have a shared goal.

those funds could be used in we continue to reach out to partners to make sure that people know that they can apply for those grants. i also think that having conversations with groups like this and talking about how you can help us support policies in the u.s. that help work on providing funding outside the united states, whether it's support from ambassadors or centers in mexico and canada. sometimes it's a hard sell for our congress to say -- we want to send tax dollars outside the country. but there's very good reason to do that. we share these species. from our perspective, bringing people together even lose into the security realm, where you are creating goodwill in joining together for a common cause. whether that is watershed protection or birds. >> deborah: sure.

>> hi, there. i'm with the united nations environment program. thank you for sharing your knowledge up there today. what charles was speaking about, engaging on a hemispheric level, some of the things we are trying to do working with arthur's in canada and the u.s., some of the countries in south america it's using the arctic council as an institutional mexican -- mechanism to advance the bird initiative. with canada's leadership it comes in waves in terms of developing a work plan and a communications strategy. i believe that a letter has gone out to you, humberto, for engagement from mexico in this initiative. i guess one of my questions is -- are there sufficient institutional mechanisms in place to institute the collaboration we're talking

about at a hemispheric level? if not, what could be done to enhance those? you have mentioned all which ross a fair bit. i don't know how familiar you are -- familiar you are with the treaty, but i know there has been much interest in perhaps advancing that, whether it's getting the u.s. or other countries to sign onto that pathway. eagerly elevating opportunities in advancing that particular treaty. thoughts and those mechanisms and ideas, welcomed. >> >> i teach at trinity washington university. if you recall, we had oil in the gulf of mexico and i was wondering if your research addresses that in terms of the affected has on bird migration.

deborah: those are both good questions. hemisphere are part of, but there was an american flyway's framework developed to try to get at these high-level policies, that we could all work together within the government on biodiversity and bird conservation. you got the wetlands conservation throughout the hemisphere. we have had conversations about -- do we? how do wcan bird initiative central and south america or if they would need something different. there are a lot of discussions going on out there. we have been talking with our congress for years and many ngo's ovens warning the u.s. in that and that will keep -- i think it will continue fortunately.

and we will continue to try. i don't think -- a lot of what was done in the gulf uses a lot of the data we have used in the report. over the past number of years it has specifically looked at the impact. also trying to say that we don't just want to spend the money only in the gulf. there are places in canada and other spots where we need to spend that money. the impacted species migrate to other places. the data used to create the report was used to impact the restoration of species in the golf, but not necessarily through this particular report. charles: adding onto the policy mechanism, we are still basically trying to explore that. one of the things that we did at the trilateral meeting, there's a trilateral meeting

between the u.s., canadian, mexican wildlife agencies that was established partly through the framework of the cdc commission on environmental cooperation. basically it's part of the nafta free trade agreement. between that year and this year we did have representatives from the convention of migratory species, the convention that created the agreement. the convention of migratory species has mechanisms to create agreements within it, which can include signatories that are not part of cms. one of the interesting questions is -- how well we as north american countries, none of which are signatories or maybe challenging the change can work together with cms which has no central -- which does have dignity or to develop appropriate mechanisms. i think the answer is that we are still exploring that and that people

interested in that type of realm, it would be very interesting to get together. it's not my area of expertise. i'm more on the technical side but i am engaged with the trilateral as well. it's an area we want to continue to explore. what is -- in a sense -- the lowest overhead and most comfortable approach for getting everyone together? is challenging. we don't want something imposed from any one of the countries. we can't say to south america -- join us. we have to find a way to join in the common ground. whether it's true in the cms or through a new agreement, or through something less formal -- there are networks that are also very well represented. what we also need is a

government that works, so that we can get the policies and legislations needed to implement what's needed. humberto: as debbie said, some is not reflected here. one of the big programs we have been talking about here is ebert, a very powerful source for information that is growing very fast. a database that is the fastest growing in the world. it is in the hundreds of millions registered. we are now arriving at a moment that is in the history of science, one that we have never seen. developing new statistical tools.

it's not structured information. leading to that information, trying to get the patterns and trends, as you mentioned, it is important. it created a particular tool for monitoring -- how do you say that? oil bert? affected by the oil problem. they did follow up with the birds and what was happening with them in the months after. that information is all in the website. we have chosen people to get close to what is happening there on the dimension of this disaster.

i wanted to mention that. in terms of instruments and mechanisms, there's a vision that we all share. the initiative took over the continent. hopefully one day we will get there. i think the three countries have done a good job in terms of accumulating experience and being more sensitive to each other's needs and concerns area i remember i forgot to say that. when i was -- these many meetings -- we were planning about population objectives and habitat objectives. we were more concerned with improving and increasing

leaning into those things. at the time we were in a position to much better understand also including population objectives in our priorities, as they can include the possibilities of components in the processes. that's like a very good example of the type of change that has happened in the last 20 years. >> before thanking the panel, i would be remiss not to recognize the great work of the staff members from canada and mexico, some of which did the program repairs and so on. we want to thank them very much. i want to send a special thanks to the intellectual author of this collaboration, nadia in the back.

i think that humberto's point in at the end is exactly what my vision of north american collaboration, bringing out the best of what we can all bring to a collaborative. talking about that, there are ways in which we need to learn from each other and learn together how to talk to each other and work together. i think you all have given us a great model for this, as we look within the wilson center for other ways in which we can help promote north american collaboration, be it in economic prosperity, security, or many other areas. this is a great model. this is an interesting program for us here and we hope to continue with the collaboration. thank you all for attending and we hope to see you back here. the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] national

cable satellite corp. 2016] at 7:00 we are live from arlington house, the robert e lee memorial at arlington national cemetery. join us with your phone calls.

thursday the 10 o 9sdz anniversary of the national park service. live from arlington house on american history tv on c-span-3. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," louisiana state university professor and historian nancy isenberg. professor isenberg talks about her book "white trash: the 400 year untold history of class in america." ♪ brian: nancy isenberg, author of "white trash." you talk about a professor in your preface, your doctoral dissertation advisor.

"had a keen passion for demystifying ideologies." what impact did that have on you? nancy: she was a very unusual person. she came to the university of wisconsin to set up the women's history program. she had to create a space for us in the history program and she was someone who was very aware not only of gender and class and racial issues and all the things she wrote about, but i think she imparted to me that you also have to understand the politics of academia and the way in which politics in general, we like to believe in america that we are free agents and we are able to sort of carve our own destiny, part of her own destiny, but we do not always good to make the choices that we think we do and

she wanted to talk about the larger ways culture, politics, the law shaped the way people think even though they might not be aware of it, but to take that into account in do not just take things as given. challenge them. see if it is really true. that is something that has really motivated me throughout my career, even when you read good history, i want to make sure i look at the end notes make sure i look at the research. i do not want to just take the consensus. i want to see if it is true and make sure that any argument you make has a firm, historical foundation. brian: how hard was it to name the book "white trash?" nancy: it started out "white trash," it had various names. then it was going to be the american breed and then it got back to be "white trash." i think part of the reason it needs to be that name is a because it is the one today that is most familiar. people have misconceptions on what it means.