| Index MMP All-Star Team
Tell me more
about the
Marsh Monitoring Program.
How do the
amphibian surveys work?
And what about
the bird surveys?
You mentioned habitat...?
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Naturalists with an interest in birds, amphibians, or both are being asked to help
conserve marshes and their inhabitants by monitoring either marsh birds or calling
amphibians (frogs and toads), or both. Surveys are conducted during the spring and
early summer, and volunteers may choose to monitor a marsh in one of the 43 AOCs, or can
select a route elsewhere in Ontario or the Great Lakes' states. To date, amphibians,
marsh birds, or both have been surveyed on over 500 routes in the Great Lakes basin.
This work has been done by more than 300 volunteers, contributing over 6000 hours of their
collective time. Great stuff!! Volunteers with several years of participation
are recognized on the MMP All-Star Team.
Training Kits and Required Skills
All volunteers receive an MMP Training Kit which contains:
a booklet with instructions for surveying marsh birds and amphibians and their
habitats
data forms, and
an instructional tape with examples of the songs and calls of the birds and amphibians you
are most likely to encounter.
Participants will also receive an annual newsletter which reports the results of the
surveys and includes interesting articles on marshes, marsh birds and amphibians. Check
out a short excerpt from a recent newsletter.
Participants must have the skills necessary to conduct the surveys. With only 13
species of frogs and toads in the Great Lakes Basin, the amphibian survey is most suitable
for beginners. The training materials provide volunteers with the means to learn the
calls of frogs and toads and fully explain the survey procedure.
While volunteers don't need to be ace-birders to conduct the marsh bird survey, the
bird component is not suitable for novices. As a general guideline, participants
should be able to correctly identify at least 50 species of common birds by sight and
sound, especially those living in and around marshes. The training tape provided in
the kit will help these volunteers refresh their memory and fine-tune their identification
skills. However, the tape alone is not enough to learn all that is required to
complete the marsh bird surveys.
How much time is required?
The program is meant to be an enjoyable and interesting experience, but there is a time
commitment involved.  depending on how well you know the marshes of your area (and we can help you
with that), selecting marshes and stations for your surveys can require about 1-2
hours. Once your sites are established, the total time required to set up the
stations, do the surveys and to tally the results will probably require another 4-8 hours
over the course of the spring and summer. Many volunteers acquire a strong personal
interest in their route and decide to monitor 'their' marshes for many years.
Although this kind of commitment is not essential to participate, the information provided
by long-term, consistently-done surveys is extremely valuable for measuring population
changes.
More on Routes
Before volunteers begin their surveys, they must establish a route. Each MMP
survey route consist of as few as 1 or up to as many as 8 semi-circular sample
stations. Both the marsh bird and amphibian surveys are conducted from a central
point (the focal point or station) located on the edge of the semi-circle sample
area. Stations are usually accessed along the edge of marshes, on a dike or
trail. However, volunteers interested in monitoring a route accessible only by boat
or canoe are encouraged to do so. In very large marshes, it may be possible for
several different routes to be established by one or more volunteers. In smaller, or
less accessible marshes, it may be feasible to establish only 1 or 2 stations.
Indeed, information on smaller marshes makes an essential contribution to determining how
the number of species (and the abundance of each species) changes with marsh size.
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