ATLAS OF BIRD DISTRIBUTION IN NEW ZEALAND 1999-2004

by CJR Robertson, P. Hyvonen, MJ Fraser and CR Pickard

Birds may be the best known animals, but we know very little of the distribution and abundances of even the most common species, and even less about any changes in their number and distribution. Birds, however, are very good indicators of environmental health, and of the effects of human activities and natural processes. Authoritative information on bird distribution, and especially changes over time, is therefore extremely valuable. This atlas, the culmination of nearly 40 years of largely voluntary effort, can further our understanding of the interactions of natural systems with climate, and of the manifold and potentially disastrous (at least for us) effects of changing human activities on our environment.

It is perhaps that such important information is rarely gathered by governmental organisations charged with ameliorating the effects of humans on our environment. Funding for biological mapping and monitoring is difficult to acquire and to maintain, especially for the periods necessary to obtain useful results. In New Zealand, the gap has traditionally been filled by volunteer; the vital place of voluntary effort in acquiring fundamentally important information has no better expression that this volume. The product of years of labour by volunteers in obtaining the raw data, and further years of analysis on shoe-string funding, it will be the foundation for all future analysis of bird distribution and abundance in New Zealand, and a benchmark in the New Zealand natural sciences.

Published by the Ornithological Society of New Zealand in 2007

Large heavy book (533 pages)

No pen markings but 1 or 2 minor bumps on cover edges

NOTE: This is a registered charity auction with proceeds being donated to worthy causes in the community