The northeastern beach tiger beetle is a long legged sand colored beetle with large black eyes living its whole life from a grubby larvae to an adult beetle in the only place on earth IT can ocean…

The northeastern beach tiger beetle is a long legged sand colored beetle with large black eyes living its whole life from a grubby larvae to an adult beetle in the only place on earth IT can ocean beaches in the northeastern united states. Living on beaches is a dangerous life because the salty desert like environment is hot in summer freezing in winter and ocean storms can create or destroy the beetles habitat in a matter of hours. Yet the northeastern beach tiger beetle has evolved to thrive in this environment. Until the 1970S this beetle was seen in vast swarms on nearly every beach in the northeast but human development and beach use has destroyed all but three populations. Two remain in massachusetts and one new population in new jersey was created by the U.S. Fish and wildlife service during the challenging COVID19 pandemic 2020 to 2022 using transplanted beetles from massachusetts. Much work remains to be done to develop methods that actively protect and create new habitats for these beetles to prevent their extinction. This project funds critical activities to create immediately needed and enduring conservation tools which will be directly applied to protect the northeastern beach tiger beetle and can also be applied to all other endangered species of tiger beetles. In particular this project supports protection of these beetles in several ways the new jersey population will continue to be surveyed by counting adult beetles in summer to judge its health is the population shrinking or growing a study to understand behavior of the adult beetles at the new jersey site do they stay in the protected areas enter the human use beaches or fly away another transplant of beetles from massachusetts to new jersey to grow the NJ population and research with piping plover conservationists to find habitat protections which benefit both these birds and the beetles. Also this project takes other actions to standardize survey methods which are only known by a few beetle experts to make these methods reproducible by USFWS states and NGO staff wishing to perform surveys which are the primary way to understand the health of populations. Lastly this project will also identify any remaining habitat in the northeast in the hopes of creating more populations and identify shoreline protection measures which can proactively protect northeastern beach tiger beetle habitat in the future.