The National Audubon Society and Audubon South Carolina are working to identify a network of sites that provide critical habitat for birds, and two of the Upstate’s most panoramic and popular state parks rank among them, along with one national forest.

Caesar’s Head/Jones Gap State Park and Table Rock State Park have been identified as two of the areas considered Important Bird Areas in the state.  The Francis Marion National Forest, with part of its acreage also located in the Upstate, ranked among these important lands as well. 

The collaborative effort between the National Audubon Society and the statewide Audubon South Carolina is known as the Important Bird Areas Program (IBA). Audubon South Carolina recognizes that habitat loss and fragmentation are very serious threats facing birds around the world. The IBA program is a global effort to identify areas that are most important for maintaining bird populations, and focus conservation efforts at protecting these sites.

Audubon South Carolina is working to identify places within our state that are critical to birds during some part of their life cycle, i.e. breeding, wintering, feeding, or migrating. Each IBA nominee is submitted to a review process and, with the voluntary cooperation of the landowner, becomes designated as important to birdlife in South Carolina.

Audubon South Carolina's IBA Program has designated twenty-three sites as Important Bird Areas. The twenty-three designated IBAs comprise nearly 1,000,000 acres and represent most of South Carolina's major habitat types, from the southern Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic coast.

Important Bird Areas of South Carolina