The Williamsburg Bird Club will host Mary Elfner, Coordinator of the National Audubon Society’s Virginia Important Bird Area (IBA) program. She will be in Williamsburg Wednesday, February 17 at Millington Hall, Room 150 at 7:30 pm. This is the Williamsburg Bird Club’s regular monthly meeting.

Ms. Elfner will provide an overview of the international IBA program and specific information and status of the Virginia IBA effort in a presentation filled with beautiful pictures of Virginia birds, and what is being done on-the-ground to conserve the Commonwealth’s birdlife.

The IBA program is an international effort to identify, conserve, and monitor a network of sites that provide essential habitat for bird populations. BirdLife International began the IBA program in Europe in 1985. Since that time, BirdLife partners in more than 100 countries have joined together to build the global IBA network. Audubon, the BirdLife Partner in the U.S., has been working since 1995 to identify and conserve hundreds of IBAs all across the United States.

The Virginia IBA program, established in 2003, is administered by the National Audubon Society and the Virginia Audubon Council in cooperation with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and the Virginia Society of Ornithology.