Beyond just species richness: Demand for conservation programs to protect or enhance abundance among regional populations of backyard bird species

Abstract

In earlier work, we have focused on species richness as a single measure of biodiversity. In this study, we seek to enhance our descriptions of what happens to backyard bird populations with and without an avian biodiversity protection program. The survey instrument for our stated-preference choice experikment includes enough abundance information about individual species of regionally common backyard birds to permit the calculation of a variety of alternative biodiversity measures. These include not only the species richness, but also the Shannon index, the Simpson index, the Simpson Reciprocal index, and others. The choice tasks in our choice experiment specifically describe the consequences of the policy for each of the top 25 backyard bird species in the respondent’s Bird Conservation Region, in batches of five, as well as the average effects on all other common backyard (passerine) species in the area.