Shorebird Conservation
Developing a collaborative approach to conservation where partners are working together with diverse stakeholders throughout the Midcontinent Americas to conserve shorebirds and their habitats.
Shorebird Conservation
Developing a collaborative approach to conservation where partners are working together with diverse stakeholders throughout the Midcontinent Americas to conserve shorebirds and their habitats.
Shiloh Schulte working in the Arctic tagging shorebirds with GPS transmitters to understand post-breeding movements and migration pathways.
Our Approach
The Midcontinent Flyway
Conservation Need
The combination of threatened habitats, climate change, vulnerable life history, and wide-ranging migrations present significant conservation challenges for shorebirds.
Two-banded Plover
In the Americas, many Arctic- and boreal-breeding species migrate to spend their nonbreeding season in southern South America, where they share environments with endemic and austral-migrant shorebird species. Other species inhabits South America year-round. The habitats favored by shorebirds across their annual cycles — grasslands, wetlands, and beaches — have been altered dramatically over the last century. Shorebirds possess a unique set of life-history traits (e.g., small clutch size) that make them especially vulnerable to environmental and anthropogenic perturbations. The combination of threatened habitats, climate change, vulnerable life history, and wide-ranging migrations present significant conservation challenges for shorebirds
Developing and Implementing the Framework
Guided by the Conservation Standards, the strategic framework places local action in a flyway context and facilitates collaboration at the scales necessary to conserve migratory shorebirds and their habitats. Framework development enhances partner and stakeholder abilities to collaborate and integrate their current efforts throughout the Midcontinent Americas Flyway to sustain a suite of shorebird populations, and the habitats they depend upon, for present and future generations. Engaging novel partners is critical to achieve effective implementation.
Asociación Calidris and Manomet implementing a workshop with local communities for conservation planning at the WHSRN site Sabanas de Paz de Ariporo y Trinidad in Colombia. photo: Asociación Calidris
In the entire MSCI geography approximately 277 people, from 242 institutions representing 18 countries and territories participated in workshops or were directly involved in the process. Results from regional workshops are being combined into a flyway scale framework. The publication of the MCSI Framework is planned for second half of 2022.
Partners and stakeholders will be able to use the framework to identify and implement the conservation, management, legislation and other local actions that meet their objectives while also contributing at the Midcontinent flyway scale. The framework will also assist partners in obtaining and leveraging funding to implement projects.
Our Conservation Goal
From avocets, curlews, plovers and seedsnipes, to phalaropes, godwits, sandpipers and more, the Midcontinent Flyway is home to many extraordinary species.
The conservation of these focal species will support the conservation of all the other species within the Midcontinent Flyway.
Tawny-throated Dotterel · Monica Iglecia
Meet the Birds
Avocets and curlews, plovers and seedsnipes, phalaropes and godwits are only some of the extraordinary species that inhabit the Midcontinent Flyway.
The Midcontinent Focal species are 26 species that were selected because they use and share a variety of habitats representative of the Flyway. Some of these species were also selected because of conservation concern, like restricted distribution or declining populations, which mean they are possibly the most vulnerable species in the Flyway.
The conservation of these focal species will support the conservation of all the other species within the Midcontinent Flyway.
photo: Shiloh Schulte
Baird’s Sandpiper
(Calidris bairdii)
photo: Christian Artuso
Buff-breasted Sandpiper
(Calidris subruficollis)
photo: Christian Artuso
Hudsonian Godwit
(Limosa haemastica)
photo: Christian Artuso
Lesser Yellowlegs
(Tringa flavipes)
photo: Brad Winn
Pectoral Sandpiper
(Calidris melanotos)
photo: Christian Artuso
Upland Sandpiper
(Bartramia longicauda)
photo: Christian Artuso
Wilson’s Phalarope
(Phalaropus tricolor)
photo: Monica Iglecia
Long-billed Curlew
(Numenius americanus)
photo: Tom Blandford
Marbled Godwit
(Limosa fedoa fedoa)
photo: Joel Jorgensen
Mountain Plover
(Charadrius montanus)
photo: Christian Artuso
Piping Plover
(Charadrius melodus circumcinctus)
photo: Christian Artuso
photo: Christian Artuso
Snowy Plover
(Charadrius nivosus nivosus)
photo: Joel Jorgensen
Western Sandpiper
(Calidris mauri)
photo: Brad Imhoff
Wilson’s Plover
(Charadrius wilsonia wilsonia)
photo: Monica Iglecia
Andean Avocet
(Recurvirostra andina)
photo: Lars Petersson
Diademed Sandpiper-Plover
(Phegornis mitchellii)
photo: Lars Petersson
Gray-breasted Seedsnipe
(Thinocorus orbignyianus)
photo: Adrian Braidotti
Magellanic Plover
(Pluvianellus socialis)
photo: Brad Winn
Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe
(Attagis gayi)
photo: Morten Ross
Tawny-throated Dotterel
(Oreopholus ruficollis)
photo: Brad Winn
Two-banded Plover
(Charadrius falklandicus)
Endemic South American Snipes
(9 Gallinago sp.)
photo: Jhonathan Miranda
We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
Acknowledgements
