In north america, bird, BAT, and insect populations are all at risk of severe population declines or extinctionwithout significant conservation action

This Project Grant award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the State Wildlife Grants (CFDA 15.634) program provides $1,128,200.00 to expand the Motus wildlife tracking network and study the migratory patterns and habitat use of four species of greatest conservation need in the Pacific and Intermountain Western U.S. regions. Specifically, the grant will fund the installation of 30 new Motus stations and the retrofitting of 50 existing stations to detect transmitters and track the movements of the monarch butterfly, hoary bat, silver-haired bat, and western purple martin. Understanding the full life cycle behaviors and critical habitats used by these species will inform conservation and adaptive management strategies, such as habitat restoration and protection, to mitigate population declines and build climate resiliency. The award recipient is the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, a non-profit organization coordinating collaborative conservation efforts across Western states and provinces.

Our ability to implement conservation actions is limited by insufficientinformation on basic natural history for many species such as migratory pathways and habitat used across lifecycles. The motus wildlife tracking system is a network of automated radio telemetry receiving stations thatdetects transmitters in a standardized format and is accessible collaboratively to researchers. This networkenables researchers to track large and small-bodied, highly mobile animals regionally or continentally to obtainimportant data needed to protect species of greatest conservation need (sgcn) and their habitats. This projectproposes to expand the motus network in the pacific and intermountain western united states by installing 30 newstations and retrofitting 50 existing stations with new receivers that enables detections of multiple transmitterfrequencies. In addition, we will use the expanding motus network to understand the migratory and movementpathways for four sgcn, the monarch butterfly (danaus plexippus), hoary BAT (lasiurus cinereus), silver-hairedbat (lasionycteris noctivagans), and western purple martin (progone subis arboricola). Understanding migratorypatterns and habitat use will substantially improve the population status of these rare and or declining sgcn andprovide secondary benefit to additional sgcn that are associated with these habitats and pathways in pacific andintermountain regions. We expect to elucidate full life cycle behaviors and important habitat used by these sgcnusing this expanding motus network. This will provide critical information needed to inform conservation andadaptive management of populations and habitats, such as habitat restoration and or protection that reducesthreats effecting these sgcn and that aims to build climate resiliency.