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“The site is known or thought to hold a significant component of the group of species whose distributions are largely or wholly confined to one biome.”

This criterion applies to groups of bird species with largely shared distributions, often greater than 50,000 km², which occur mostly or wholly within all or part of a particular biome. Many of these assemblages are found in large areas of relatively intact and continuous habitat where delimiting IBAs may be particularly difficult. Biome-restricted species are those whose entire (global) breeding distribution lies entirely of mostly within the defined boundaries of the biome (Fishpool and Evans 2001). Seabirds are excluded from these lists because their distributions are thought to be influenced by different factors than those affecting terrestrial species, and their conservation is covered through the application of other criteria.

Because there is no standard global classification of biomes used by BirdLife, the U.S. IBA Committee has selected Avifaunal Biomes, as established by Partners in Flight in their Continental Plan, as the geographic units representing the A3 biomes. The Partners in Flight classification of avifaunal biomes is based on clustering of Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs), the geographic units recognized by North American Bird Conservation Initiative for conservation planning (Rich et al. 2004).

As defined by the U.S. IBA Committee, species which are biome-restricted under the A3 criterion are those with at least 90% of the population concentrated within one avifaunal biome.

Reference:

Rich, T. D., C. J. Beardmore, H. Berlanga, P. J. Blancher, M. S. W. Bradstreet, G. S. Butcher, D. W. Demarest, E. H. Dunn, W. C. Hunter, E. E. Iñigo-Elias, J. A. Kennedy, A. M. Martell, A. O. Panjabi, D. N. Pashley, K. V. Rosenberg, C. M. Rustay, J. S. Wendt, T. C. Will. 2004. Partners in Flight North American Landbird Conservation Plan. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Ithaca, NY.

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