The arizona game and fish department (department) participates in the multi-state desert thrasher working group (dtwg), which is in the final stages of publishing a conservation strategy (borgman ET AL

This Cooperative Agreement award, provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management under the Good Neighbor Authority (CFDA 15.015) program, will fund research to study the movements and habitat use of LeConte's and Bendire's thrashers in Arizona. The $250,000 award, spanning September 2024 to September 2027, aims to address information needs identified in the draft Desert Thrasher Conservation Strategy, which recognizes solar development as a moderate to high threat to these priority species.

The project will deploy satellite tags on desert thrashers to collect data that can: 1) improve siting of solar projects by identifying important breeding habitat, movement corridors, and wintering areas; 2) inform solar facility planning and design by comparing thrasher habitat use across different facility types; 3) investigate impacts of solar development on thrashers by quantifying post-construction displacement; and 4) define critical thrasher habitat using the GPS location data. The Great Basin Bird Observatory has been awarded a $151,000 sub-grant over 3 fiscal years to conduct the thrasher movement and habitat use studies.

In prep.) for these two priority species (lecontes and bendires thrashers). This strategy document identifies solar development as a moderate to high threat to these species. The strategy identifies several focal research questions that could minimize these effects by contributing to our understanding of how desert thrashers respond to and use areas after solar development. One focal research topic highlighted in the strategy is to use telemetry and or pre- and post-construction surveys to: (1) determine whether desert thrashers use habitat adjacent to or within solar developments (2) quantify minimum required patch sizes for thrashers in and near solar facilities (3) document changes in survival and productivity attributable to solar development (4) assess collision risk, and (5) evaluate thrasher habitat use across solar facilities that employ different design features. This project aims to address information needs identified in the draft desert thrasher conservation strategy by deploying satellite tags on desert thrashers in multiple locations. The data from these surveys can help to: 1)improve siting for solar projects by identifying important thrasher breeding habitat, movement and migration corridors, stopover habitat, and (for bendires thrasher only) wintering areas 2) inform solar facility planning and design by comparing thrasher habitat use and movements across different types of facility designs 3) investigate the impacts of solar development on desert thrashers by quantifying post-construction thrasher displacement (if any). This objective is conditional on acquiring before and after data at a solar installation site and 4) define important habitat using fine-grained location data associated with solar powered GPS transmitted birds.