Important Bird Areas

Important Bird Areas, or IBAs, are sites that provide essential habitat for one or more species of bird. IBAs include sites for breeding, wintering, and/or migrating birds. IBAs may be a few acres or thousands of acres, but usually they are discrete sites that stand out from the surrounding landscape. IBAs may include public or private lands, or both, and they may be protected or unprotected.
Audubon IBA website

To qualify as an Important Bird Area, sites must satisfy at least one of the following criteria. The site must support:

• Species of conservation concern (e.g. threatened and endangered species)
• Restricted-ranges species (species vulnerable because they are not widely distributed)
• Species that are vulnerable because their populations are concentrated in one general habitat type or biome
• Species, or groups of similar species (such as waterfowl or shorebirds), that are vulnerable because they occur at high densities due to their congregatory behavior

Identification of a site as an IBA indicates its unique importance for birds. Nonetheless, some IBAs are of greater significance than others. The process of determining priority levels among IBAs is based on a hierarchy of criteria. Sites may be prioritized as Global, Continental, or State level IBAs. See specific criteria which apply.

Several USACE projects have been identified as IBA's at the state, national, and global levels.

• USACE Overall List of Important Bird Areas

  Arkansas

  • Blackland Prairie Preserves
  • Dardanelle Lake
  • Millwood Lake

  Georgia

  • Carters Lake
  • Richard B. Russell Lake
  • Thurmond Lake

  Illinois

  • Mississippi River Project

  Iowa

  • Mississippi River Project

  Missouri

  • Mississippi River Project

  Oregon

  • East Sand Island, Columbia River Estuary

  Pennsylvania

  • Shenango Reservoir

  Texas

  • Wallisville Lake