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Many songbirds that nest in North America and winter south of the United States have declined significantly in recent decades, some by more than 90%. Why should we care? Songbirds contribute to the health of our environment by controlling damaging insects. Some birds pollinate flowers and many help spread plant seeds. Furthermore, birds are highly valued by the public for aesthetic and economic reasons. More than 63 million people in the US watch birds for recreation while over 90 million feed birds—together spending more than $14 billion annually on these activities.
The Avian Research and Education Institute (AREI) would like to invite you to be a partner in our education-based conservation efforts. AREI is a nonprofit organization based in the Miami Valley of SW Ohio and SE Indiana. Our mission is to advance the appreciation, understanding, and conservation of birds and their habitats through research and education. Like many other bird observatories, AREI was created to help reverse the precipitous declines in songbird species first recognized in the 1970’s.
One of AREI’s primary goals is to monitor populations of bird species while they are still relatively common, enabling cost-effective responses before a species becomes threatened or endangered. Our long-term migration studies at the Hueston Woods Biological Station (HWBS) and the Miami University Bird Observatory (MUBO) in Butler County, provide a means for documenting changes in the abundance and productivity of songbirds in the Miami Valley. Since 2004, AREI staff and volunteers have banded and released more than 1000 birds of 83 species. Results from our research contribute to national databases for monitoring bird population trends and are presented to resource managers to facilitate regional conservation planning. | 
