Atlantic Coast Joint Venture Winter News 2010
Partners working together for the conservation of native bird species in the Atlantic Flyway region of the United States.
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Piping Plover are one of many shorebird species benefiting from the latest round of coastal grants. |
Seven Coastal Wetlands Grants Awarded in the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in December 2009, awarded more than $3.6 million in National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grants to seven projects in six states in the Atlantic Flyway: Florida, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia. State resource agencies and other project partners contributed over $2.2 million in matching funds for the federal grants, to conserve, restore, and protect 940 acres of coastal wetlands. View the grants.
Three Additional North American Wetland
Conservation Act Grants Recommended for Approval in ACJV
The North American Wetlands Conservation Council, in December 2009, recommended funding three additional ACJV project in three states. Projects in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina will receive $3 million in grant funds to be matched by nearly $22 million in partner funds. Over 12,200 acres will be protected, restored, or enhanced. These projects along with the nine projects approved in September, 2009 would result in the conservation of over 65,000 acres of significant wetland, riverine and upland habitat for priority migratory birds. View the grants.
Joint Venture Board Meets to Review Conservation Science and LCCs
The Atlantic Coast Joint Venture Management Board met in Baltimore, Maryland on December 3-4, 2009 to review ongoing conservation science in the joint venture and to discuss the role of the joint venture with emerging Landscape Conservation Cooperatives. The agenda, draft minutes and most of the presentations are posted on the joint venture website.
The first day of the meeting, Atlantic Coast Joint Venture staff and partners reviewed the framework for landscape conservation science as articulated in the ACJV Strategic Plan and Biological Foundation Plan and then reviewed the status of biological planning, conservation design, monitoring and research in the joint venture. Biological planning highlights included the Bird Conservation Region planning initiatives in the Atlantic Northern Forest, Lower Great Lakes St. Lawrence Plain, New England Mid Atlantic and South Atlantic Coastal Plain as well as the Northwestern Atlantic Birds at Sea Conservation Cooperative. Conservation design highlights included the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project in the South Atlantic presented by Dr. Jaime Collazo (North Carolina State University) and Habitat Classification and Mapping in the Northeast presented by Dr. Mark Anderson (The Nature Conservancy). Monitoring and evaluation highlights included an update by Tim Jones on the Flyway Integrated Waterbird Monitoring and Management Project and descriptions of secured and managed lands databases by Mark Anderson and Rob Deblinger (Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife). Discussions highlighted additional projects and needs for conservation science in the ACJV.
Staff and partners then reviewed the status of climate change science projects and needs including a presentation on state and regional vulnerability assessments and incorporation of climate change in to State Wildlife Action Plans by Dr. Hector Galbraith (Manomet Center for Conservation Science) and a presentation on dynamic sea level rise models by Dr. Glenn Guntenspergen (U.S. Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center). Discussions focused on the role of the joint venture in facilitating regional climate change assessments and planning.
The second day of the meeting began with description of federal agency roles in facilitating conservation science and climate change planning in the Atlantic Coast region. The background and status of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center and Regional Climate Science Centers was described by Rachel Muir (U.S.G.S. Northeast Region) and the Science Alliance model for collaborations between Wildlife Research Centers and joint ventures was described by Greg Smith (Director of the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center). The background and status of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives was presented by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service leadership including Marvin Moriarty (Northeast Regional Director), Cindy Dohner (Southeast Regional Director) and Paul Schmidt (Assistant Director for Migratory Birds).
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Landscape Conservation Cooperatives falling within the ACJV boundary. |
Landscape conservation cooperatives (LCC) are envisioned as broad-based partnerships providing the science necessary to undertake strategic conservation efforts across large geographic areas, e.g., at landscape and regional scales. The Department of the Interior and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) are developing a coordinated network of LCCs across the United States, in part to address major environmental and human-related factors that limit fish and wildlife populations at the broadest of scales, including developing adaptation strategies in response to climate change. The science provided by these partnerships will inform decisions about conservation delivery and evaluate the effectiveness of conservation actions within an adaptive management framework. The Northeast Region of the Fish and Wildlife Service is initially establishing the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative and the Southeast Region is initially establishing the South Atlantic LCC. The idea for these LCCs came in part from the joint ventures and the geographic areas identified were based in part on Bird Conservation Region and joint venture boundaries.
The Management Board then discussed the role and potential for collaboration between the joint venture and emerging landscape conservation cooperatives. They agreed that there was a great opportunity to build on the Atlantic Joint Venture in the development of the North Atlantic and South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperatives. The board passed two motions that describe a leadership role for the ACJV in the development of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC) within its boundary and active collaboration in conservation science undertaken by these LCCs. ACJV board members, technical committee members and staff will become involved and stay involved in the meetings and discussions involved in establishing LCCs in the ACJV area (initially in the North Atlantic and South Atlantic) and provide insights on the best way to establish these LCCs. Through this involvement, the ACJV partners and staff seek to minimize duplication and maximize appropriate collaboration between the joint venture and LCC.
The ACJV management board appointed seven board members to initially coordinate collaborations with the North and South Atlantic LCCs.
Impacts and Conservation Strategies Related to Climate Change in the ACJV: Assessing Landscape Change in the South Atlantic
This is the third in a series of newsletter articles that discuss the likely impacts of climate change on habitats and birds in the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture area and the role of the joint venture in planning for and addressing those impacts.This article focuses on the assessment of change in landscapes due to climate change and other factors in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain.
Southeast U.S. fish and wildlife agencies are increasingly challenged to predict and respond to the potential effects of a changing climate and a changing landscape. In response to these challenges, the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture initiated a project: “Designing Sustainable Landscapes for Bird Populations in the Eastern United States”, which is currently funded under the Multi-State Cooperative Grant Program from the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. The objective is to develop and implement a consistent framework and the necessary tools for landscape-level strategic habitat conservation planning in the South Atlantic Migratory Bird Initiative (SAMBI) region of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Researchers at the Alabama Cooperative Research Unit are implementing methods for structured decision making in order to identify priority species for planning. Meanwhile personnel at the North Carolina Cooperative Research Unit are incorporating projections of climate change, urban growth, land cover dynamics, and sea-level rise into habitat models for the priority species.
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Northern Bobwhite is one of the species highlighted in the Designing Sustainable Landscapes Project |
One of the major challenges in implementing an adaptive management strategy is to anticipate and estimate the indirect impacts of climate change on the landscape. Changes in temperature and precipitation may directly impact vegetation and wildlife through changes in phenology and water availability. However, other subtler impacts that occur over long time-scales could have a larger effect on the entire ecosystem.
In the SAMBI region, fire frequency changes are a prime example of a potential indirect climate change impact that could have large-scale implications for vegetation and wildlife. Fire is a disturbance of great importance to the ecosystems in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain. These systems historically experienced high frequency but low intensity fires that limited the growth of hardwoods and a shrubby understory. Although human-induced landscape changes have dramatically altered the frequency and extent of the pre-settlement fire regime, the inter- and intra-annual variability along with the relative magnitude of the fire regime remain tightly coupled to the climate system.
The SAMBI team is using a two-part methodology to project changes in the fire frequency and the associated effects on the landscape. First, to model changes in fire frequency, a statistical model relates historic fire occurrence data to various climatic and environmental variables such as temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture. This model then projects changes in fire frequency over the next century using the outputs from a suite of global climate models.
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Longleaf pine habitat is important for several priority bird species including the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. |
Second, the fire frequency projections are incorporated into a vegetation dynamics model, the Vegetation Dynamics Development Tool (VDDT) and the Tool for Exploratory Landscape Scenario Analyses (TELSA), to simulate landscape change in the Southern Atlantic Coast in the 21st century. Random and non-random disturbances such as fire, disease, and timber management are modeled according to their likelihood of occurrence (for random disturbances) or according to a pre-determined cycle (non-random disturbances). Changes in fire frequency are expressed as either increases or decreases in the probability that a fire will occur for a particular system.
The initial results are intriguing. In one system for example, for the Atlantic Coastal Plain upland longleaf pine, the model indicates that under a business as usual greenhouse gas emissions scenario, mid- and late-open stage habitat is resilient to increased fire frequency. This is considered to be prime habitat for several of the priority bird species in the SAMBI, including the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker. These findings could have important implications for conservation planning in that some systems appear to provide greater resilience to climate change than others.
Northwest Atlantic Marine Bird Conservation Cooperative Updates
The Northwest Atlantic Marine Bird Conservation Cooperative held its annual meeting January 27-29 in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The Cooperative formed in 2005 representing state, federal, ngo's, and universities and meets semi- annually. The group formed to engage resource agencies and partners to develop new alliances to prioritize and implement research, management, conservation, and educational actions to sustain and improve marine birds in the offshore environments. The group functions through ad-hoc working groups around the core priorities of the Cooperative: Distribution and Abundance of Marine Birds (e.g., shipboard and aerial surveys), Individual Tracking (e.g., satellite and data loggers), Oil Spill Preparedness and Response, and Fisheries Bycatch.
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Common Loon are susceptible to bycatch. |
Initial outcomes of the meeting include the drafting of a Business Plan for Marine Bird Bycatch in the Atlantic. The Bycatch group, made up of members of NOAA, FWS, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, USGS, and others, worked together to analyze data and estimate potential impacts to better understand bycatch threats. The group also identified a number of voluntary, no-cost measures that could be developed to assist the fisheries industry reduce bycatch. A new position in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Region 5 will assist with the implementation of the Bycatch Plan and conduct outreach to the fishing industry and associated management councils and commissions.
A comprehensive survey plan has been developed that identifies key sites, species, and outcomes for aerial, shipboard, and land-based surveys, and will be used in combination with individual tracking priorities to ensure adequate coverage for understanding marine bird distributions and priorities. Recently, proposals for funding have been developed and submitted to various agencies based on the material from the workshop. This collaboration and action is the defining identity of the Cooperative: a partnership that identifies priorities and then goes out and implements them.
Partnership Focus: Montezuma Wetlands Complex
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Montezuma Wetland Complex |
The Montezuma Wetlands Complex (MWC) is one of the Atlantic Flyway’s premier avian focus areas, a vast 50,000 acre mosaic of marshes, swamps, and floodplain forests lying in an alluvial plain between Lake Ontario and the Finger Lakes, in west-central New York. Montezuma provides critical resting, feeding, and staging habitat for more than one million waterfowl and countless shorebirds and songbirds every year. Flocks of Canada and Snow Goose can exceed 100,000 birds of each species, during migration. Fall Mallard use has also exceeded 100,000 birds, and American Black Ducks numbers often reach 25,000. Montezuma supports expanding populations and nesting colonies of many birds, including some of the region’s rarest, such as Black Tern, Sandhill Crane, Cerulean Warbler, Bald Eagle, Black-crowned Night-heron, and Great Blue Heron. A Registered National Natural Landmark, Montezuma was once a floodplain dominated by open and forested wetlands, punctuated by drumlins (glacial hills), that provided numerous “islands” of upland nesting cover. During the 1800’s, much of this area was ditched and drained during the creation and expansions of the Erie, Seneca, and Cayuga Canals, which intersect within the complex. After draining, extensive “muck agriculture” occurred on the rich lowlands, which had become less prone to seasonal inundation. After decades of farming, many of these fields have been depleted of nutrients, and are considered marginal farmland. Conservation partners have bought many retired fields in the past decade, to restore them to open marsh, swamp, and moist-soil or green-tree impoundments. Those and other projects at Montezuma have been funded in part by five standard and one small NAWCA Grant over the years.
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Montezuma |
Given the area’s importance to migratory birds, it is no surprise that major conservation organizations, from the National Audubon Society to Ducks Unlimited, have long had an interest in Montezuma. The New York State Department of Environmental Protection (NYSDEC) established the Howland Island Wildlife Management Area (3,600 acres) in 1932, and now owns 7,500 acres in the Complex. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) established the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge (now 8,000 acres) in 1938. The Nature Conservancy has bought some 3,000 acres in the complex, much of which is now part of the refuge.
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Montezuma Audubon Center |
In 2006, partners realized a mutual vision: a 5,200 square-foot education center, the Montezuma Audubon Center, opened in the middle of the complex. The center is a State-owned facility operated through a cooperative agreement between the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the National Audubon Society, and is managed jointly by NYSDEC, Audubon New York, and Friends of the Montezuma Wetlands Complex (FOMWC). These partners have energized and organized the public and myriad volunteers; to appreciate and support the complex and its wildlife. The Audubon Center has a wide range of educational programming scheduled throughout the year; including school programs, field trips, after-school programs, teacher workshops, photography workshops, and a “Bird of the Month” lecture series.
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Purple Martin houses were funded by the annual Muckrace. |
This year the FOMWC hosted its thirteenth annual “Muckrace,” a local version of the “World Series of Birding,” organized by FOMWC, Audubon New York, NYSDEC and the USFWS. The Muckrace typically involves 20 or more competing teams of birdwatchers who count some 188 species of fall migrants in 24 hours. This event has raised over $56,000 for bird conservation projects in the complex, netting over $9,000 per year for the last four years. Activities funded by the Muckrace include restoration of a five acre moist-soil wetland to be managed for migrant shorebirds; staffing a MAPS banding station; monitoring and research on shorebird, grassland bird, Black Tern, and Cerulean Warbler habitat use; Virginia Rail behavior, DNA, and telemetry studies; and a Purple Martin House and sound system, among others.
Each fall volunteers band ducks around the complex, typically banding 1,000 to 2,000 birds, which represent 63% of the ducks banded in New York State in a given year. The Montezuma Alliance for the Restoration of Species & Habitats (MARSH) is a MWC initiative to protect, restore, and enhance habitat on the refuge. MARSH members and volunteers have carried out large-scale and intensive efforts to remove invasive exotic plants, both terrestrial (garlic mustard) and aquatic (water chestnut). other accomplishments include the Montezuma Research Symposium, 'Savannah Wild' Bus Tours, regular Newsletters for both the MWC (Cattails) and Montezuma Audubon Center, DeRoo Memorial Youth Hunt, Tim Noga Memorial Blind, the Annual Wildlife Festival at Montezuma, and the Annual “Wildflowers and Wine” Festival. Jim Eckler, a NYSDEC biologist who works at Montezuma said that those efforts “are all indicative of the Complex” and the mutual values, vision, and inspiration of its partnership.
Great Lakes Restoration Initiative: Joint Venture Habitat Restoration and Protection Request for Proposals
Beginning in the current Fiscal Year (2010), the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is a federal effort to target the most significant environmental problems in the Great Lakes ecosystem and fund and implement projects that address these problems. The Atlantic Coast Joint Venture and the Upper Mississippi & Great Lakes Region Joint Venture are working with the Wildlife & Sport Fish Restoration programs in the Midwest and Northeast Regions of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to competitively fund high-priority projects that provide long-term restoration, enhancement, or protection of migratory bird habitat. In our region (i.e., the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario Basin), preference will be given to activities that help meet the habitat goals of the BCR 13 Bird Conservation Region Plan. Up to $1.86 million in funds are available during fiscal year 2010. Grant requests between $100,000 and $500,000 will be accepted. We expect to announce the awards in June, 2010. Eligible applicants for this competitive grant program include state fish and wildlife agencies and other non-federal conservation agencies or organizations that provide at least a 25% non-federal match for habitat restoration, enhancement and protection activities. Projects must be within the U.S. watershed of the Great Lakes as defined by the U.S. EPA (Great Lakes Watershed and Lower Great Lakes Watershed in NY and PA) within states bordering the Great Lakes (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). View entire RFP.
Grants and Deadlines |
Upcoming Meetings |
North American Wetlands Conservation Act North American Wetlands Conservation Act Small Grants Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program National Fish and Wildlife Foundation |
Winter Meetings ACJV Technical Committees ACJV Management Board |
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