The Bureau of Land Management- Arctic Field Office has a requirement for coordinating research andmonitoring projects related to the effectiveness of stipulations and surface resource impacts in theNational Petroleum Reserve - Alaska. Yellow-billed Loons are among the least common breeding birdsin the mainland United States and the U.S. breeding population is concentrated largely within theNational Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A). Interest in developing the oil and gas reserves withinNPR-A has increased within the last 10 years, along with a need for better information with which toprotect loon populations. Fundamental to protection strategies is a good understanding of distributionand abundance.In 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), in cooperation with the Bureau of LandManagement (BLM), began development of a comprehensive database of yellow-billed loonobservations (Gavia adamsii). The database was intended to provide a qualitative “first look” at whereloons have been recorded and where surveys have been conducted. From the standpoint of projectassessment, the purpose was to provide a “one-stop shop to identify data sources and data quality, anda general sense of relative abundance for a particular project area”. Data assembled during the initialeffort was compiled and distributed to users in 2008. The database was further updated in 2010 and isnow available for download from the Arctic LCC website (https://www.fws.gov/science/catalog).The 2013 agreement with BLM (# L13PG00154) provided the financial support necessary to furtherupdate the Yellow-billed loon Geodatabase by incorporating recent information on observations andsurveys for yellow-billed loons within Alaska and expand the geographic scope to include the CanadianArctic
