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Conservation approaches that efficiently protect multiple values, such as the umbrella species concept, have been widely promoted with expected dramatic ecosystem changes. Due to its social and cultural importance, and recent declining trends, boreal populations of woodland caribou have been suggested as potential umbrella species for other declining taxa, such as boreal landbirds. We propose a generic pixel‐based umbrella index that focuses on fine‐grained habitat overlaps. In light of ongoing conservation efforts worldwide implementing area‐based targets (e.g., 30% by 2030), we used a random neutral model as baseline, as opposed to a no‐conservation scenario, which has been used elsewhere. We found that the conservation efficiency of caribou as an umbrella for 71 co‐occurring landbirds—three of which are priority species—in the Northwest Territories, Canada, is generally lower than our random model, as 53% of the species presented negative umbrella index medians with the interquartile range not overlapping zero. We conclude that in cases where area‐based targets drive decision‐making and the issue at stake involves identifying which areas to conserve—not whether to conserve—woodland caribou may be a leaky umbrella for most co‐occurring landbird species and these might need complementary conservation actions to be brought in from the rain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yellow Rail (Coturnicops noveboracensis) is a secretive marsh bird of conservation concern in Canada. However, the status of this species in northern boreal regions remains largely unknown given uncertainty about population abundance and distribution. This knowledge gap is mainly due to limitations of traditional survey methods to detect this species. In this study, avian point count data collected from autonomous recording units and augmented by detections from a machine-learning recognizer were used to generate a species distribution model to provide habitat-specific density estimates and population size estimates for Yellow Rail breeding in the Edéhzhíe Dehcho Protected Area, Northwest Territories. This protected area is ∼150 km beyond the currently established northern range limit. A large population estimated at 906 (± 146) pairs was discovered. Yellow Rail were found at high densities in marshes (0.063 ± 0.004 males/ha), but were also observed in fens and bogs, albeit at much lower densities (0.003 ± 0.002 males/ha and < 0.001 ± 0.002 males/ha). Our results suggest both the range and the population size of Yellow Rail are much larger than currently reported. Further studies are required to provide better population size and distribution estimates to conserve this species at risk in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]