Northwest Territories/Nunavut Bird Checklist Survey

The Northwest Territories / Nunavut Bird Checklist Survey is a bird monitoring program that relies on the observation and reports of volunteers.. It was initiated to collect much needed information on the distribution, abundance and breeding status of birds in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It was initiated by Environment Canada’s Canadian Wildlife Service in 1995 as a response to needs identified in the Canadian Landbirds Monitoring Strategy.

Checklist data can provide a great deal of useful information that is otherwise difficult to collect in a large, remote area like the North. By working cooperatively with volunteers, a database of bird sightings is being used as baseline information for further studies, environmental assessments, more accurate mapping of bird distributions, and (if the database becomes large enough) detecting major bird population changes.

Data Requests

Information from the Checklist Database may be obtained by using the Contact Us feature. Data can be sorted and retrieved by geographic coordinates, individual species, species groups, National Parks or Territory. The data is also available on the Species Access Canada web site, although it may not be the most current and is restricted to the data fields listed on their site. Wihile it is not continuously updated or comprehensive, it is a very quick way to answer questions about a certain area or species of interest.