I prepared a brief proposal for Gulf coast work on red knots to help improve habitat if fall migrant and wintering habitat is lost to the oil spill.
“The sandy beach stopover and winter habitat of red knots and other species (ruddy turnstone, sanderling etc.) makes them especially vulnerable to oil spills. Reducing vulnerability is especially difficult because of all shorebird habitats, beaches are least likely to respond to management. Marsh and mudflat habitats of marsh birds like semipalmated or western sandpipers can be managed through habitat improvements like vegetation removal, dredge spoil management, or water level management. In this way an agency can either restore or create new habitat to compensate that which is lost to the spill. These birds may also use managed alternatives to natural habitat threatened by a spill, like abandoned impounded areas used for aquaculture. Water levels can be managed to provide new foraging and roosting habitat.
For shorebird using beaches there are no alternative safe habitats and few management prescriptions that can be used to improve habitat that will offset losses or keep birds in place. Only three types of management have been found effective:
1. Restoring developed beach to natural conditions, essentially by moving away houses and debris and bringing in sand to improve beaches.
2. Creating safe roosts, free from predators and close to important foraging areas, with dredge spoil or other beach manipulations. Predator removal can also improve night time roosts which are especially important.
3. Reducing disturbance from human-related recreation to improve quality of both roosts and foraging areas.
People using a beach used by red knots at Indian Shores , FL
Restoration or any major habitat alteration takes years of planning to be successful. Roost management requires detailed understanding of daily activity of shorebirds relative to tides because roosts can change frequently especially in areas of high human use. Disturbance management can be effective, but most projects have been poorly documented so efficacy of different methods is unknown. Of the three choices disturbance management in areas not affected by the spill appears to be the only quick way to offset habitat loss from the spill.”
The most important red knot wintering area in the US lies on the Gulf coast potentially threatened by the oil spill. Protecting knots, piping plovers, Wilson’s plovers, willets, ruddy turnstones, sanderlings and the other shorebirds wintering in southwest Florida and Texas (little is known of the other Gulf states) will be an immense job if the spill is not contained by September. Agencies are now looking for ways to increase the quality of habitats in areas not affected by the spill, in other words they want to make them more productive. The only viable method for shorebirds using beaches is reduce disturbance, however, that will be a big job – communities will want to maintain or increase the levels of recreational use to offset other economic losses from the spill, like recreational fishing.
red knots using beach near Jacksonville, FL have proposed to experimentally reduce disturbance in six of the most important sites for red knots, then implement the best method immediately. We also proposed to have onsite wardens to provide early warning of beach spills. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
