Justification

Responding to climate change may be one of the world's most important and complex endeavors of the 21st Century. Climate change modeling predicts large changes in species’ distributions and the potential for extinctions, but phenological factors involving predator-prey interactions, and interspecific competition add levels of complexity even more difficult to forecast. Gathering empirical evidence of these relationships and monitoring changes over time may greatly improve overall predictions, and offer wider choices for the conservation of biodiversity.

Nowhere is the effect of climate change on biodiversity, ecology, and biotic interactions likely to be more measurable than in the arctic. Arctic conservation managers are now seeking solutions and strategies on how to measure and mitigate climate change effects, and how to respond to other anthropogenic impacts in this rapidly changing ecosystem.

Top predators, such as birds of prey, are often sensitive to environmental change, and can sometimes serve as early indicators of threat and as models for conservation intervention. Gyrfalcons and their principal prey, ptarmigan, are widely distributed in the arctic ecosystem, and are therefore candidates for measuring, understanding, and potentially mitigating current and predicted changes in their world.

The Peregrine Fund, Boise State University, and the United States Geological Survey will co-host an international conference on the ecology and conservation of the Gyrfalcon and its prey in arctic and subarctic alpine ecosystems, with special emphasis on the three species of ptarmigan with which this falcon has a close predator-prey relationship. Emphasis will be placed on predicting the impacts of global climate change on the Gyrfalcon and those species that will most influence its ecology in this century, including Homo sapiens.

Based on what is known about the biology and ecology of the Gyrfalcon, its principal competitors (Peregrine, Golden Eagle, Common Raven), and its main food resources (ptarmigan, seabirds, and waterfowl), the conference will consider what predictions can be made about changes in their distribution and abundance in the face of global warming and a range of other impacts including contaminants, resource extraction, and emerging diseases.

The conference will bring together experts from around the world to share information and to develop a common purpose toward (1) understanding the difference between local, regional, and global factors affecting population viability of Gyrfalcons, ptarmigan, and other prey, (2) understanding changing patterns of abundance throughout their circumpolar distributions, and (3) establishing a global strategy and plan of action for research and conservation of these species.

Invited speakers will include world experts on Gyrfalcons, ptarmigan, and other prey species, their competitors, and habitat, as well as on climate change and associated change in arctic and alpine biotas, contamination, resource extraction, diseases, and other factors influencing the ecosystems in which these species occur.

The conference proceedings and commentary will be peer-reviewed and published in a bound volume and searchable CD, and individual papers made freely available with early online publication.

The Peregrine Fund World Center for Birds of Prey · 5668 W. Flying hawk lane · boise, idaho 83709 USA
Phone: 208.362.3716 · fax: 208.362.2376 · Email: tpf@peregrinefund.org

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