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Tennessee Bird Records Committee
Purpose
of the TBRC The
Tennessee Bird Records Committee (TBRC) of the Tennessee Ornithological Society
maintains the Official List of the Birds of Tennessee and insures that sightings
of rare species are accurately and adequately documented for posterity. History
of the TBRC Following
a proposal by Charles Nicholson at the 1981 Tennessee Ornithological Society (TOS)
Fall Meeting, a resolution forming the TOS Certification Committee was unanimously
passed at the 1982 TOS Spring Meeting [ Stallings,
1982 ]. The committee was charged with
compiling an official list of all bird species documented to have occurred within
the state. The Certification Committee
consisted of one regular member and one alternate from each of the three Grand
Divisions of the state with the editor of The Migrant acting as Chair (ex-officio). The first edition of the Official List was
published in The Migrant in 1983 [ Nicholson,
1983 ]. At
the 1989 TOS Fall Meeting, following a proposal by Richard Knight, a resolution
was passed that changed the name of the committee to the Tennessee Bird Records
Committee and specified that the committee chair be selected by the committee
members [ Robinson,
1989 ]. A
resolution at the 1994 TOS Spring Meeting redefined the membership of the TBRC
to include five members and one alternate (to vote on any record submitted by
a TBRC member). Also, geographical restrictions
requiring that the membership represent all three Grand Divisions of the state
were lifted in favor of insuring that the most-qualified persons are selected
to serve, no matter where they may reside [ Hatcher,
1994 ]. Further
changes were adopted in a resolution at the 1998 TOS Spring Meeting following
a proposal by Chris Sloan aimed at increasing the responsibilities of the TBRC
and bringing the committee more in-line with records committees of other states.
Specific changes to the TBRC included increasing the membership to six
voting members and one alternate, allowing members to serve two consecutive terms,
and changing acceptance criteria to require at least five (out of six) votes to
accept a record. Geographic restrictions on membership were
once again put in place. New responsibilities
of the TBRC included defining and maintaining a set of status codes to indicate
the abundance and frequency of occurrence of each species within Tennessee and
acting on all submitted reports (whereas formerly only the first three reports
of a species in the state were solicited and acted upon) [ Martin,
1998 ].
TBRC
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