​DuBois Park will be used as a field site by a research team from the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources to study the effects of feeding white ibises on the birds’ overall health and ecology.

The research team will capture, sample and re-release white ibises to determine how much time they are spending in natural habitat sites vs. urban habitat sites.

South Florida Ibis populations have declined significantly in recent years, and it is important that researchers investigate how humans food provisioning is affecting the ecology and status of white ibises that are learning to adapt to urban environments.

Birds are captured on site using mist nets. These nets have pockets that birds fall in to and the team extracts them from the nets within minutes of getting tangled in them. The nets are not left unattended at any time. Once they extract the birds, they hold them to collect samples (fecal, blood, and feather), outfit them with a GPS unit (to a subset of them) and release them at the site. The samples they collect help assess how much time birds spend between natural & urban habitats and their overall health.

The same study is also taking place at Dreher Park, operated by the City of West Palm Beach.

For more information on the study, visit the White Ibis Project’s Website, http://hernandezlabuga.wix.com/wilddisease#!white-ibis-project/qivcm.

The Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at UGA is the oldest existing forestry school in the south. Located on South Campus, the school’s educational and outreach programs focus on the conservation and management of forests and other natural resources, including discovering ways to restore and better use them. For more information, see http://www.warnell.uga.edu/.

Creating opportunities for healthy, happy living, the Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation Department operates more than 80 regional, district, community, beach, and neighborhood parks, spanning several thousand acres. For low-cost, often free, leisure opportunities available through the Parks and Recreation Department, visit www.pbcparks.com.