Urban Bird Foundation

Urban Bird Foundation combines on-the-ground restoration and protection with training and education to achieve lasting conservation of priority habitat located in or adjacent to urban and suburban communities. We empower local residents to take a leadership role in conservation, with the ultimate goal of ensuring the wellbeing of communities and the natural spaces and ecosystems people and wildlife rely on. Our long-term goal is to work with more communities to attain economically and ecologically viable community-based projects, and to export the successful aspects of our program as a model of conservation to other priority urban and suburban habitats. Our short-term goals are the establishment of grassroots-level management plans for native bird conservation (e.g. burrowing owls), mitigation policies that provide for onsite or in-city habitat and species protection (e.g. ensuring a portion of wildlife habitat lost or under threat from development remains in the same city for the benefit of both its human and wildlife residents), and the continued safeguarding and restoration of open spaces.

At Urban Bird Foundation, we focus our work where we can make the biggest impact on bird, wildlife and green space conservation. Our work in urban and suburban communities builds social, economic and environmental value, and is designed to preserve and restore people’s connection to the natural world.

Using a foundation in science and sustainable development, Urban Bird is involved at every level — from local policy to hands-on conservation to catalyzing national support — and challenges the status quo to deliver solutions that make short- and long-term sense for communities and meet the needs of both birds and people.

Protect Urban and Suburban Bird Populations
Birds are an integral part of the ecosystem and serve many important purposes, and even contribute to the economy, health and education of our communities

Combat Nature Deficit Disorder
We’re losing our connection to nature! According to Cheryl Charles and Richard Louv, there was a documented 50% decline in the amount of time children in the U.S. spent outdoors

Promote Sustainable Development
Development should be a process that encourages and strives for “cumulative good”—being environmentally sustainable, delivering social equity and benefits, and achieving economic growth

Build Community, Civic and Economic Value
Parks and open spaces enhance the quality of life and, when central to the community’s economic development strategy, help attract visitors, new residents and businesses

Establish Wildlife Corridors
People continue to depend on nature and benefit from internal urban ecosystems. These urban green spaces play a vital role in maintaining and increasing wildlife biodiversity

Increase Environmental and Science Education Opportunities
Local, publically accessible preserves and open spaces provide ample opportunity field trips and service learning programs for schools and students

Safeguard Natural Resources
Urban and suburban open spaces provide innumerable air, water, pollination and other environmental advantages, and preserve the natural resources that birds, other wildlife and people need

Create Economic Opportunities
With more than 48 million birders in the U.S., birds and their habitats support local businesses and contribute to the local, state and federal tax-base in the billions of dollars annually

Urban Bird Foundation builds new coalitions that leverage public and private support to ensure healthy, community-accessible bird populations. We apply our talents, knowledge and passion to the creation and preservation of urban green spaces that make life better and sustainable for people and wildlife. Our unique way of working combines hands-on conservation and advocacy with a foundation in science.

We aim, with our partners, to build consolidated support for sustainably developed communities that recognize the importance of integrating nature into planning. Publicly available urban and suburban green spaces protect biodiversity, build community values, safeguard our air and water, strengthen our economy, increase health and wellness, and serve as outdoor, living laboratories for children. We’re helping build a popular movement to create an equitable, healthy world where birds are not ostracized from our communities but are a part of our communities.

Our programs fall within the following categories:

Integrated Nature
Urban Bird champions, enhances and helps create mixed-use green spaces in communities that serve as educational opportunities, community resources and native habitat. We simply cannot ignore the health, environmental and social benefits of open spaces as well as their value in maintaining native bird and wildlife populations.

Building Coalitions
The Communities of Action program connects community and civic leaders to one another so they can share ideas, foster sustainably planned cities, and create green space results. The program brings together professionals with on-the-ground experience and experts to shape and advance innovative practices for protecting, restoring and creating urban preserves.

Burrowing Owl Conservation
Urban Bird combines hands‐on advocacy, research, education, and progressive burrowing owl and habitat management policies to reverse a trend that currently promotes extirpation. We are creating an imperative for conservation in which municipalities embrace sustainable development for the benefit of its wildlife, people and ecosystems.

Advocacy
Sound planning and public policy is critical to the success of long-term bird conservation efforts in our communities, region and nation. Urban Bird works to secure transformative change at the local and national level; partnering with and advocating for governments and agencies to protect birds, urban habitats, and the natural resources we all need.

Urban Bird Foundation has spearheaded suburban habitat protection in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California, and emerged as a leader for burrowing owl conservation in the United States. By building coalitions that leverage support to ensure healthy, community-accessible green spaces and habitat in urban and suburban environments, we use our knowledge and passion to engage residents for the creation and preservation of these often non-traditional, but critical habitats – efforts that involve, train and inspire children and adults to become informed leaders, environmental stewards, and active participants in restoration projects, open space protection and city and county planning decisions.

Since 2008, Urban Bird has created a 24-acre burrowing owl preserve – representing the first such preserve in Contra Costa County – and established landowner agreements providing an opportunity to protect critical habitat and install more than 200 artificial burrows (underground owl boxes designed to simulate natural burrows for the protection of Western burrowing owls) in California and Oregon, including partnerships and projects with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to serve as models for projects in western states. To date, Urban Bird has provided field-learning experiences to 3,560 students, helped restore and protect more than 10,165 acres of habitat through partnerships with public agencies, cities and organizations, and responded to 8,000 calls for burrowing owl rescues, habitat protection and wildlife assistance in communities across the United States, and helped get the burrowing owl listed as threatened on the Florida Threatened and Endangered Species List.