Assessment of the fine-scale habitat requirements the extent of available habitat remaining for
the globally endangered Giant Nuthatch (Sitta magna) and the implications for its conservation
in Thailand

The Giant Nuthatch (Sitta magna), a bird in the family Sittidae, is restricted to southwestern China, eastern Myanmar, and northern Thailand and is now globally endangered with a total population estimated at <2500 individuals. However, the precision of this estimate is low (~ 1000-2500) because it was based almost entirely on rough guesswork, rather than quantitative data. In addition, it is likely that all remaining Giant Nuthatch sub-populations are isolated and tiny (<50 individuals), but this also has not been quantified. A central issue for the conservation of this species is that there has been very limited study of their habitat use and there are still no high-quality maps available to estimate the remaining habitat. In Thailand, there have been only one detailed study/publication that we are aware of that have mentioned about the status and the remaining habitats of Giant Nuthatch in Chiang Dao Wildlife Sanctuary, Chiang Mai, Thailand (Techachoochert et al. 2018). Therefore, the goals of this project are: (1) improved policy on Giant Nuthatch that will allow for better management, (2) develop distribution map and detailed habitat map of the Giant Nuthatch in Chiang Dao Wildlife Sanctuary and (3) to observe nest site characteristics and locations in Chiang Dao Wildlife Sanctuary. The surveys will be conducted by a highly experienced team within Chiang Dao Wildlife Sanctuary. We will use medium resolution SPOT satellite images to characterize Giant Nuthatch habitat and estimate the extent of available habitat based on confirmed locations. We will also use N-mixture models to estimate the abundance of Giant Nuthatch in the surveyed habitat and extrapolate our data to estimate the size of the population remaining in Thailand.