SYMPOSIA
Photo caption: Sharp-shinned Hawk fitted with a GPS transmitter at Mackinaw Straits Raptor Watch, credit Josiah Gritter.
Sharp-shinned Hawks in decline?: Insights from disease, tracking technologies, and future management
Organizer: Danny Erickson, Cedar Grove Ornithological Research Station, ericksda56901@gmail.com
Description: The Sharp-shinned Hawk is one of the most numerous raptors in North America, yet key knowledge gaps remain in their migration and breeding ecology. The Raptor Population Index has recently reported lower counts of Sharp-shinned Hawks during annual migration, raising questions about whether these trends reflect a true population decline or broader ecological changes. This symposium will examine potential drivers of these patterns and explore how insights from other conservation efforts can inform large-scale management strategies. Topics will include environmental contaminants and disease, multi-flyway telemetry tracking, and recent advances in full annual cycle tracking technologies for small raptors. The session will also highlight lessons learned from management of an island-endemic Sharp-shinned Hawk population. By bringing together ongoing research and applied conservation efforts, this symposium aims to synthesize current knowledge and identify actionable steps to help ensure that this common raptor remains common.
Photo credit: The Raptor Center
From Clinic to Conservation: Integrating Raptor Rehabilitation into Actionable Science
Organizers: Christian Hagen1, Dana Franzen-Klein2, and Erin Katzner3
1 Oregon State University, Corvalis, OR; 2 The Raptor Center, Minneapolis, MN; 3 World Parrot Trust, Travelers Rest, SC
Raptor rehabilitation and conservation science have traditionally operated from distinct ethical and conceptual frameworks: rehabilitation grounded in animal welfare and focused on individual birds, and conservation focused on populations and ecosystems. This separation has limited recognition of the rehabilitation community’s potential contributions to conservation. However, the scale and consistency of contemporary rehabilitation efforts are beginning to challenge this perspective. Across North America, facilities collectively admit and release tens of thousands of raptors annually, generating information on causes of injury, disease exposure, and release outcomes across broad spatial and temporal scales. When considered in aggregate, these data represent more than individual case histories; they provide insight into population-level responses to environmental stressors and anthropogenic risk. In addition, released individuals may contribute, in part, to offsetting these losses, suggesting a role for rehabilitation not only as a source of ecological information but, in some contexts, as a form of applied mitigation. This perspective is increasingly relevant as raptor populations face emerging pressures, including highly pathogenic avian influenza, expanding energy infrastructure, and persistent human-caused mortality. This symposium will examine how rehabilitation can be more fully integrated into raptor research and management. We will address the use of rehabilitation networks as early warning systems for disease, the quantification of spatio-temporal patterns in injury and mortality, post-release survival and movement ecology, and the application of rehabilitation in mitigation and regulatory contexts. Additional contributions will highlight the role of rehabilitation facilities in public engagement and conservation education. By bringing together researchers, managers, and practitioners, this session aims to evaluate both the opportunities and limitations of rehabilitation-derived data and to identify practical pathways for incorporating these resources into monitoring frameworks, risk assessment, and conservation decision-making.