Protection of Critical Beach-nesting Bird Habitats in the Wake of Severe Coastal Storms

Rutgers University and Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey have partnered on a project entitled Protection of Critical Beach-nesting Bird Habitats in the Wake of Severe Coastal Storms under the North Atlantic LCC coordinated Hurricane Sandy Disaster Mitigation Funds beach resiliency projects. The project uses species’ distribution modeling to examine the landscape-scale habitat variables that influence beach-nesting bird habitat selection. The original project had the following primary goals: 1) catalogue suitable breeding habitat criteria for NJ’s beach-nesting birds; 2) quantify changes in beach-nesting bird habitat resulting from Superstorm Sandy; 3) evaluate the impact of anthropogenic storm recovery efforts on beach-nesting bird habitat; and 4) develop an assessment protocol to identify and prioritize for protection of new breeding habitat created by severe coastal storms.  The species being addressed are piping plovers, American oystercatchers, least terns, and black skimmers.

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