Helping Build Community and Northwoods Partnerships

For 13 years, Katie O’Brien has worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in Marquette, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A large part of her job is helping to build partnerships key to saving some of the continent’s scarcest songbirds and other species. Here is some of Katie’s story, in her own words.

I believe that successful bird conservation depends on ensuring the well-being of people and nature together. The “Northwoods” region holds more than 75 percent of the breeding populations of two scarce warblers. I serve on the Kirtland’s Warbler Conservation Team and I co-chair the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group. Through diverse partnerships, we seek to conserve these species while meeting local communities’ needs.

For example, working with ABC on “Forestry for Birds” programs, we empower foresters, biologists, and landowners to apply practical, economical, and effective land management strategies that benefit these birds. The FWS’s Migratory Bird Program is committed to welcoming and including all people in bird conservation activities. Our Urban Bird Treaty program helps large cities become spaces where birds and people can thrive and where connected conservation communities are sustained.

Golden-winged Warbler

Kirtland's Warbler

Additionally, by teaming up with ABC’s Bird City Americas program and local Rotary clubs, I get to join forces with business owners and community leaders from diverse professional and social viewpoints, as we strive toward resilient communities and bird populations for future generations.

Award-winning watercolor painter Beatriz Benavente lives in Spain, where she specializes in scientific and bird illustration. You can follow her on Instagram: www.instagram.com/wildstories.art

The Gift of a

Atop Ecuador’s Cerro de Arcos mountain, a hummingbird with a shimmering blue throat probes orange flowers amid rocky outcroppings. Beneath a craggy ledge, his mate incubates a clutch of tiny eggs. These Blue-throated Hillstars go about their day unaware that their species is one of the rarest in the world, only discovered by ornithologists in 2017 and described to science in 2018.

More and more, ABC is able to support vital bird conservation work thanks to our supporters having the forethought to name ABC as a beneficiary of their wills and estates. In the philanthropy world, this is known as “planned giving” because gifts are planned as part of individual estate and financial planning.

Planned giving played a hand in helping the hillstar. The species’ restricted alpine meadow habitat was entirely unprotected and under severe threat of burning and overgrazing by cattle — until 2020, when ABC and our Ecuadorian partner Fundación de Conservación Jocotoco (Fundación Jocotoco) stepped in to purchase 110 acres to establish a nature reserve for this species. ABC could support this action thanks to generous donations from our supporters, including a bequest from the estate of Mary Janvrin.

“When we lacked any income from tourism from one day to the next, Mary Janvrin and American Bird Conservancy helped us not only generously but also swiftly,” says Fundación Jocotoco’s Chief Executive Officer Martin Schaefer. “I am personally very thankful for this strong support, which allowed us to continue to manage and protect a network of reserves for some of the most threatened bird species on the planet.”

Thanks to the estate of Mary Janvrin, ABC was also able to provide emergency pandemic relief to more than a dozen additional partners, ensuring their vital work could continue. Meanwhile, a generous legacy gift

Cerro de Arcos landscape, April 2018, by Michael Moens; RIGHT: Blue-throated Hillstar by Roger Ahlman

Lifetime

from the Elane and Ron Nuehring Trust helped support ABC’s core costs, providing added confidence in uncertain times.

At ABC, we have many supporters who have named our organization as a beneficiary of their will, retirement plan, trust, or life insurance policy. Those that inform us of being included in their estate plans are recognized as members of our Legacy Circle — our core group of committed individuals who support a common vision for the future of bird conservation. Legacy Circle members receive lifetime membership in ABC, invitations to special ABC events and field trips, and an exclusive annual letter from ABC’s President.

Legacy gifts also enable ABC to expand our regional coverage. A generous bequest through the estate of longtime supporter Phyllis Brissenden allowed ABC to help partners complete three land protection projects in 2020, protecting 6,650 acres in Washington and Colorado for the Northern Spotted Owl and Gunnison Sage-Grouse.

The same bequest is also allowing ABC to support a wide network of partners in Hawai'i to address mosquito-transmitted avian malaria, using a promising approach that limits mosquitoes’ reproductive capacity. This effort is critical if we are to prevent the extinction of many of the islands’ endemic honeycreepers, which lack immunity to introduced diseases these insects carry and transmit. In 2021, we launched an outreach campaign called “Birds, Not Mosquitoes” to raise local public support for this issue.

For many ABC supporters, a planned gift allows them to make a more significant contribution to bird conservation than they feel is possible during their lifetimes. According to the Giving USA 2020 report, bequests contributed $43 billion to U.S. charities in 2019 — nearly 10 percent of all charitable giving in the country that year. Over the last few years, planned gifts have enabled ABC to take on conservation projects we otherwise would not have been able to tackle. In addition, we are often able to use these funds to leverage donations from other individuals or organizations to achieve greater results. Simply put, legacy gifts are transformative for ABC and bird protection across the hemisphere. They represent the gift of a lifetime — for the individual and for birds.

— Daniel J. Lebbin, ABC’s Vice President of Threatened Species

If you are interested in learning more about planned giving to ABC or joining our Legacy Circle, please contact Jack Morrison, ABC’s Director of Major Gifts and Planned Giving, at: jmorrison@abcbirds.org, 540-253-5780.

P.O. Box 249 The Plains, VA 20198 abcbirds.org 540-253-5780 • 888-247-3624

The Violet-crowned Hummingbird, one of the star birds at the Paton Center for Hummingbirds in Arizona, which ABC helped to protect. Photo by Eric Gofreed.