DuBois Park will be used as a field site by a research team
from the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural
Resources to study the effects of feeding white ibises on the birds’ overall
health and ecology.
The research team will capture, sample and
re-release white ibises to determine how much time they are spending in natural
habitat sites vs. urban habitat sites.
South Florida Ibis populations
have declined significantly in recent years, and it is important that
researchers investigate how humans food provisioning is affecting the ecology
and status of white ibises that are learning to adapt to urban
environments.
Birds are captured on site using mist nets. These nets have
pockets that birds fall in to and the team extracts them from the nets within
minutes of getting tangled in them. The nets are not left unattended at any
time. Once they extract the birds, they hold them to collect samples (fecal,
blood, and feather), outfit them with a GPS unit (to a subset of them) and
release them at the site. The samples they collect help assess how much time
birds spend between natural & urban habitats and their overall
health.
The same study is also taking place at Dreher Park, operated by
the City of West Palm Beach.
For more information on the study, visit
the White Ibis Project’s Website, http://hernandezlabuga.wix.com/wilddisease#!white-ibis-project/qivcm.
The Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at UGA is the
oldest existing forestry school in the south. Located on South Campus, the
school’s educational and outreach programs focus on the conservation and
management of forests and other natural resources, including discovering ways to
restore and better use them. For more information, see http://www.warnell.uga.edu/.
Creating opportunities for
healthy, happy living, the Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation Department
operates more than 80 regional, district, community, beach, and neighborhood
parks, spanning several thousand acres. For low-cost, often free, leisure
opportunities available through the Parks and Recreation Department, visit www.pbcparks.com.