News

National Audubon Society receives award for Bird-Friendly Maple program

The National Audubon Society recently received a $2 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service to support the expansion of the Bird-Friendly Maple program. The investment is part of $145 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding to connect landowners to emerging climate markets. Audubon’s Bird-Friendly Maple program is a market-based approach that incentivizes maple producers to manage their sugarbushes (forests that are used to produce maple syrup) in ways that provide forest bird habitat and increase forest sustanability through unique product labeling and marketing opportunities. Biologically and structurally diverse sugarbushes offer great places for birds to forage, find cover, and raise their young. They are also likely to have better long-term sap production, fewer forest health problems, and are better able to adapt to the stresses of climate change.   

Pennsylvania is the 6th largest maple-producing state in the country. This grant enables Audubon’s Forest Program in the Mid-Atlantic to roll out Bird-friendly Maple for maple producers in our region to provide technical and habitat management expertise. Through these market-based incentives, Audubon can help maple syrup producers not only provide important habitat for declining forest birds but also provide the public with bird-friendly syrup! You can read more about the grant and the maple program here. 

When shopping for maple syrup, be sure to look for the maple syrup containers with the label indicating the syrup was produced in a Bird-Friendly forest habitat.  Maple sugarbushes can be good for birds, but forests that are managed with birds in mind are even better! 

2024 Legislative Tracker

As the legislative seasons get underway in both Pennsylvania and Maryland, Audubon Mid-Atlantic has created new on-line tools that track our legislative priorities. The Pennsylvania tracker can be found here, and the Maryland tool can be found here
 
The tools identify Audubon's priority legislation during this legislative session and describe Audubon Mid-Atlantic's position. The tools will track the status of the identified bills and explain how the legislation would support priority birds and their habitats in our region. We hope it will help you to keep tabs on our legislative priorities throughout the 2024 sessions. 

Learn More and Get Involved

Audubon Maryland-DC and Audubon Pennsylvania have joined forces to become Audubon Mid-Atlantic.