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Great Basin Regional Report: NEW EDITORS

Hello, Utah and Nevada birders.

I am writing to let you know that I shall
soon be stepping down as regional editor
for the Great Basin Regional Report in the
journal North American Birds. The reason
for my departure, as many of you know by
now, is that I shall soon be moving to
Colorado to take on a new job as the editor
of Birding magazine.

The new Great Basin regional editors are
Steve Summers and Rick Fridell, and I am
really excited about having them on board
for several reasons:

  1. Steve and Rick are active birders,
     they get out in the field a lot, and
     they produce lots of terrific records--
     more often than not with superb written
     and/or photographic documentation.

  2. They have been faithful contributors
     to the Great Basin regional report,
     and both of them have supplied me with
     helpful editorial suggestions and fact-
     checking over the years.

  3. Almost uniquely, they do a lot of birding
     in both Utah and Nevada. The vast majority
     of us (myself included) bird in one state
     or the other, but Rick and Steve present
     a commendably interstate perspective on
     birding in the Great Basin region.

Reporting procedures should be essentially un-
changed under Steve and Rick's watch, and you
can still find all the details on the internet.
Instructions to contributors can be viewed
on line, via links from both the Utah Birds
<http://www.utahbirds.org> and Great Basin Bird
Observatory <http://www.gbbo.org> web sites. Of
course, you may wish to get in contact directly
with either Rick <rfridell@redrock.net> or
Steve <summers@cedarcity.net>, too.

             *          *          *

It is conceivable, I suppose, that one or two
of you are unfamiliar with the Great Basin
regional report, so I would like to take this
opportunity to say a little about its history
and objectives.

Until 2000, the states of Utah and Nevada
were lumped in with Wyoming and Colorado in
a massive reporting region called the Mountain
West. Basically, the Mountain West regional
report was 90-95% Colorado. In some reporting
periods, there were actually no records from
Utah and/or Nevada.

The editor of North American Birds at the
time was Michael Patten, and he approached
Graham Chisholm and me about initiating a
breakaway "Great Basin" reporting region to
be comprised of the states of Utah and Nevada.
(The name "Great Basin" is somewhat contrived,
of course, since some of the most important
habitats in Utah and Nevada lie in the Mojave
Desert and other eco-regions.) Graham schemed
with me about the new regional report during
the summer of 2000, but he wasn't able to
commit to a regional editorship because of
an exciting new job that took him away from
the Great Basin.

So the task of getting the regional report
off and running fell to Mark Stackhouse (in
charge of Utah) and me (in charge of Nevada).
Mark soon had to bow out because of conflicts
with his tour company, so I took the reins
for the Utah half of the equation too. Doing
the regional report was an incredible learning
experience for me: I got a sense for the
staggering number and diversity of shorebirds
on the Great Salt Lake; I started to get a
quantitative feel for patterns of passerine
vagrancy at the desert oases in southern and
central Nevada; I came to appreciate Pyramid
Lake as a regular stopover for seabirds on
fall migration; and I was greatly impressed
by the richness and complexity of the whole
region's breeding avifauna.

I was also amazed by how many active birders
there are, here in the sparsely populated
Great Basin. In the recent winter report
(December 2001 through February 2002), for
example, I received reports from 110 observers.
Of this total, 71 appeared in the list of
cited contributors at the end of the report.
Not bad for the dead of winter, and not
bad for a region that counts more poorwills
than people.

In the years to come, I envision the Great
Basin regional report as a key element in
the development of comprehensive bird
monitoring and inventory projects in both
Utah and Nevada. In my own state of Nevada,
for example, I see obvious connections with
the recently initiated Important Bird Areas
(IBA) program, as well as with the statewide
all-bird monitoring effort (just now getting
off the ground). And I can imagine all sorts
of uses on a case-by-case basis: studies of
individual species or sites, analyses of
population trends, etc.

And even if you don't have a "scientific"
use for the Great Basin regional report,
I hope you will view it as a fascinating
chronicle of the region's bird life and a
starting point for further study and discovery.
Do Black Rails breed along the Virgin River?
Could Boreal Owls occur in the region? When
will there be another Common Redpoll invasion?
What will be the next mega-rarity at the Great
Salt Lake? The answers to these and other
questions will likely be revealed in future
volumes of the Great Basin regional report,
so stay tuned!

In the meantime, you can go back and browse
old drafts of the Great Basin regional reports,
which are archived at both the Nevada birds 
<http://list.audubon.org/archives/nvbirds.html>
and Utah birds <http://www.utahbirds.org> web
sites. Note, though, that these are pre-publi-
cation drafts. That means (i) they contain some
errors and (ii) they contain no photos or other
graphics. So if you are going to use the Great
Basin regional reports for your own research,
you really do need to get a hold of back issues
of North American Birds.

Finally, if you are interested in the "big
picture" of how all the regional reports
together constitute a national treasure,
then you should definitely check out an
essay by Jon Dunn that is archived at this
web site:

http://www.americanbirding.org/publications/nabjdunn.htm

Well, that should do it. If you have questions,
I'd like to hear about them. And I'm sure Rick
and Steve would, too.

Ted Floyd
Reno, Nevada
tedfloyd57@hotmail.com

*************************************************

Please note that I shall be out of the office, away from e-mail, and 
generally inaccessible during the period 1 May 2002 - 15 May 2002.

Thank you!




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