This multi year project (1 april 2024 to 31 december 2025) proposes to 1) develop document and implement new improved methods that more accurately monitor use of restored and or enhanced wetlands by…

This federal Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service under the Migratory Bird Joint Ventures program (CFDA 15.637) provides $166,620 to develop and implement improved methods for monitoring the use of restored and enhanced wetlands by birds, frogs, and people. The key activities include:

1. Piloting the Wetland Restoration Monitoring Protocol (WRMP) to better detect spring migrating waterfowl and rare marsh breeding species at 50 point count locations in 8 wetlands over 2 field seasons.
2. Publishing a peer-reviewed paper describing the WRMP methodology.
3. Exploring the use of citizen science datasets like eBird and iNaturalist to estimate human use of publicly accessible restored and enhanced wetlands.
4. Producing outreach materials such as blogs, magazine articles, and videos to communicate the benefits of wetland restoration and enhancement for wildlife and humans based on the project findings.

The award recipient, Birds Canada, is a national charitable organization focused on bird conservation across North America. This project aims to develop scalable and transferable wetland monitoring methods to be used throughout the Southern portion of the Eastern Habitat Joint Venture (EHJV) delivery area.

This multi year project (1 april 2024 to 31 december 2025) proposes to 1) develop document and implement new improved methods that more accurately monitor use of restored and or enhanced wetlands by all bird and frog species and people and 2) use results based on the improved methods to better communicate to funders supporters and the public the benefits of these wetlands for humans and wildlife. All activities will include a focus on american black ducks and other eastern north american waterfowl. The improved methods will include the wetland restoration monitoring protocol (wrmp) for birds and frogs which combines the strengths of the marsh monitoring program (MMP) with 5 other monitoring protocols to better detect spring migrating waterfowl and rare marsh breeding species. The new methods will also include novel use of ebird inaturalist and other similar datasets to estimate human use of publically accessible restored and or enhanced wetlands. All of the methods will be scalable and transferable to throughout the southern portion of the ehjv delivery area. Measures of the project success include 1) 2 field seasons piloting the wrmp at 50 point count locations in 8 wetlands each year 2) a peer reviewed paper describing the wrmp 3) results of an exploratory analysis aimed at gauging the utility of using broad scale citizen science datasets to estimate human use of publically accessible restored and or enhanced wetlands and 4) at least 1 blog one or more magazine article(s) one or more short video(s) for social media all of which will highlight how wetland restorations and or enhancements benefit wildlife and humans based on the project findings. (note that the abstract window would not allow commas semi colons colons dashes or apostrophes to be saved hence the funny sentence structure).