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Stan Senner
907/276-7034
ssenner@audubon.org

ALASKA, January 3, 2005—Dr. Iain Stenhouse, a native of Scotland and graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland, has been appointed Director of Bird Conservation at Audubon Alaska in Anchorage. The Director of Bird Conservation is a new position created to implement Audubon’s Important Bird Area (IBA) project in Alaska. The position was made possible by a multi-year grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Audubon Alaska is the Alaska State Office of the National Audubon Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting birds and other wildlife and the habitat that supports them. One of the organization’s priority projects is the IBA program, a worldwide wildlife conservation initiative designed to attain better protection and management of places that are especially important for birds.

As Director of Bird Conservation at Audubon Alaska, Dr. Stenhouse will be primarily responsible for launching an IBA project in Alaska. To qualify as an IBA, sites must satisfy at least one of a series of strict scientific criteria and stand out as having local, continental or global significance for birds. Over the next few years, Audubon Alaska plans to identify and inventory IBAs across the entire state, many of which will have global significance.

Dr. Stenhouse will also be responsible for updating the Alaska WatchList, which highlights declining and vulnerable bird populations in Alaska. The WatchList is an early warning system that focuses attention on at-risk populations before they are in jeopardy of extinction.

Dr. Stenhouse completed his B.Sc. with honors in Biology at University of Paisley, Scotland, in 1992. In 1995, he moved to eastern North America to take on graduate studies of seabirds. He completed a M.Sc. at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), Canada, in 1998, focused on the habitat use and breeding success of Leach’s Storm-Petrels. He continued his research at MUN in pursuit of a Ph.D. and spent four summers working with the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) on Southampton Island in the eastern Canadian Arctic, where he studied the reproductive and behavioral ecology of Sabine’s Gulls. In 2003, CWS and MUN worked together to create a postdoctoral fellowship for Iain. This fellowship project involved carrying out aerial surveys for Ivory Gulls breeding in the Canadian High Arctic, and writing a recovery strategy for this species.

Audubon is celebrating its centennial year of protecting birds and other wildlife and the habitat that supports them. Our national network of community-based nature centers and chapters, scientific and educational programs, and advocacy on behalf of areas sustaining important bird populations, engage millions of people of all ages and backgrounds in positive conservation experiences.

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