Despite the single authorship of this report, the Research on Avian Protection Project was conducted as a collaborative, multidisciplinary project that involved dozens of other individuals in academia, industry, and government who worked toward a common goal of increasing bird protection in the oil sands region of Alberta. This report synthesizes the results of that work, which includes several independent components completed over the past few years by me and other members of the RAPP team. These other components include (a) reports on specific incidents or programs that have been submitted previously to government and industry, (b) protocols or training material for use by industry, (c) manuscripts that have been or will be submitted to peer-reviewed journals, and (d) theses by graduate students. Associated documents are introduced in the chapters that follow. Most documents are already available in their entirety on the RAPP website (http://rapp.biology.ualberta.ca/), but others will appear there later. In particular, manuscripts intended for peer-reviewed journals will be posted after acceptance of their final versions. Theses submitted to the University of Alberta library may be embargoed for six months to protect primacy of publication.
Some of the information contained in this final report is new, but much of it summarizes the preceding documents described above. Anyone making reference to the information contained in this report should cite the titles and authors of the original documents when possible. Information that is not contained in other documents and the entire report can be cited as follows.