Writes to "question both the appropriateness of [Kennedy 1997's] choice of variables and her analyses of them when testing for evidence of declining northern goshawk abundance."

Believes her use of range maps was problematic and meaningless. States that her use of density estimates were inappropriate because these estimates are a function of study area size. States that "fecundity and survival, estimated from local autonomous studies, also have no necessary relationship with goshawk abundance at the scale of North America. Survival estimates represent populations, and have no documented relationship with geographic range size."

In direct contrast to Kennedy's paper, he states that migration counts "are more likely to be indicative of continent-scale change in abundance through time than would be the rate of population change assessed by Kennedy, because populations are local and may shift locations through time"

"A meta-analysis, as recommended by Kennedy, probably would not suffice for assessing goshawk abundance trends in North America in lieu of proper sampling. This sampling would involve "selecting multiple sampling sites from various environmental conditions, from which variation in populations attributes could be effectively interpreted."

"A listing decision for the northern goshawk would not rely on the data and analysis [Kennedy] used. Population density, fecundity, survival, and rate of population change all lack scientifically defensible relationships with range-wide abundance, as does the size of the geographic range within a single species." He states these parameters only apply to local population trends.

Summary
Challenges Kennedy's (1997) conclusions that no evidence for North American goshawk population declines exist. Bases this on: questioning the quality of the data from range maps she used; disagrees that migration counts are not good indicators of population trends; does not believe the meta-analysis she recommends is appropriate due to incongruity among studies in different regions and areas; does not believe that population density, fecundity, survival, and rate of population change have relationships with range-wide population abundance and status.