Canada's Important Bird Area Network

Canada’s Important Bird Area (IBA) program empowers communities to become stewards for local bird populations. With the generous support of our corporate, government, and foundation partners, Nature Canada has helped over 100 grassroots IBA site support groups, facilitated more than 150 on-site projects, developed 150 conservation plans, and cultivated a superb voluntary stewardship network to monitor bird populations, restore habitats and educate communities from coast to coast. Find out more about these communities in action.

The Canadian Important Bird Areas (IBA) program has identified sites that provide essential habitat for bird populations through an internationally established, systematic and science-based approach.

Nature Canada’s online guide to some of Canada’s Important Bird Areas describes the sites of greatest biological significance, those facing the most imminent threats, and those offering timely conservation opportunities in Canada. Learn more.

To date, the Canadian program has identified 597 IBAs. Our goal is to identify and conserve every site in Canada that meets the following IBA criteria:

Threatened species
Sites that hold significant numbers of endangered, threatened, or vulnerable bird species. Such habitats are often under imminent threat, and conserving these IBAs is essential to reversing population declines and preventing extinctions.

Birds with restricted breeding ranges
Sites that hold endemic species or those with restricted ranges. Birds with small breeding ranges are vulnerable because loss of small amounts of habitat can negatively affect large numbers of a species’ population. Unlike tropical countries, this category has only limited application in Canada because most of our bird species have large breeding ranges.

Biome restricted assemblages
A biome-restricted assemblage is a site that holds a grouping of species found only in a particular natural community type. Sites that support biome-restricted assemblages are often of general conservation interest, and protecting these IBAs conserves habitat for birds and a host of other unique flora and fauna.

Bird concentrations
Sites where birds concentrate in significant numbers when breeding, feeding, staging, wintering or migrating. The majority of Canadian IBAs are identified under this category. Protection of key breeding sites and staging areas within Canada is critical to the health of vast numbers of birds that range throughout the Americas.

Nature Canada and Bird Studies Canada are Canadian co-partners delivering BirdLife International’s Important Bird Areas program in Canada. We aim to identify, monitor and protect a global network of IBAs for the conservation of the world’s birds and other biodiversity.