Injury and Mortality Reporting System Released for Use by USFWS Employees

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) has recently released its Injury and Mortality Reporting (IMR) system for use by USFWS employees. The system was developed with the purpose of better informing the management of the USFWS trust resources, but will also be equally beneficial to certain users outside of the USFWS who would like a free, centralized system to log species injury/mortality either for the direct purpose of sharing it with USFWS (e.g. those that have reporting responsibilities associated with a permit) or for the purpose of organizing, sharing and easily retrieving data being used for a specific research or management objective. The system is currently equipped to allow reporting of all 1,027 MBTA protected birds. A user can also report the finding of a bat, although particular species of bats have not yet been added to the species selection list. Additional species beyond birds and bats may be added in the future.

The system is currently being used most actively by USFWS to organize and track eagle information including information on USFWS permitted activities and best available information on known unpermitted (i.e. those that occur without being associated with a permit, e.g. shootings, poisonings) eagle mortality/injury incidents.The information is being used by USFWS employees to help inform research questions and facilitate permitting and management decisions regarding eagles. In early 2016, the USFWS does expect to release the system to select parties outside of the USFWS, including federal partners that express interest. To learn more about the USFWS Injury and Mortality Reporting (IMR) system, please visit the IMR page on the Migratory Bird Program's Decision Support Tools webpage.