Rota is home to incredible avifauna, including several endangered and endemic species

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Lands and Natural Resources received $202,841.71 through a Formula Grant awarded by the Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service under the Wildlife Restoration and Basic Hunter Education and Safety program (CFDA 15.611). The award, effective April 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027, supports the continuation and expansion of the Tropical Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survival (TMAPS) bird banding program on Rota in partnership with the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP). The program implements standardized constant-effort mist-netting and capture-mark-recapture analytical techniques to monitor demographic changes in forest bird populations and collect fine-scale population data that point-count surveys cannot provide.

The funded activities include ongoing bird banding operations, data collection from banded birds, weather and habitat monitoring, and demographic analysis to identify drivers of population change in Rota's endangered and endemic avifauna. The collected demographic data, combined with environmental information, will be used to describe population change patterns and inform future wildlife management decisions regarding population responses to environmental changes. This monitoring effort builds on a prior TMAPS program conducted on Saipan from 2008-2018 and represents a continuation of the Division of Fish and Wildlife's commitment to comprehensive forest bird population assessment and species conservation across the Northern Mariana Islands.

The cnmi division of fishand wildlife DFW)wildlife section monitors forest bird populations through our annual breeding bird surveys .however, these point count monitoring efforts do not provide the fine-scale data needed to identify drivers ofpop lation change. The tropical monitoring avian productivity and survival (tmaps)program utilizes an applicationof standardized constant effort mist-netting and modern capture-mark-recapture analytical techniques as aneffective means for monitoring demographic changes in forest bird populations. IT has been widely used across thetropics and was conducted on saipan from 2008-2018. DFW, in partnership with the institute for bird populations(IBP),began operating the tmaps bird banding program on rota in the spring of 2024. We will continue to useweather and habitat data along with the demographic data collected from the banded birds to describe patterns ofpopulation change and to better understand and predict population responses to environmental changes, for futuremanagement purposes.