strengthened connection
Linking Habitat Investments to Population Outcomes
The science that relates waterfowl population growth to habitat conditions continues to strengthen. Population models that can quantify habitat's contribution to population growth at each life cycle stage have been completed for several species with diverging life-history strategies (Stearns 1992; Hoekman et al. 2002; Flint et al. 2006; Coluccy et al. 2008; Johnson 2009; Amundson et al. 2013; Wilson et al. 2012; Howerter et al. 2014; Koons et al. 2014; Arnold et al. 2017; Zhao et al. 2020). With additional investment in these models, the NAWMP partnership should be able to increase spatial targeting of resources to geographies that drive population growth rates. Also, with nearly four decades of experience delivering NAWMP habitat programs, practitioners have extensive knowledge of how relative habitat delivery costs vary by program and geography.
With these pieces of information, and with a fixed set of resources available to invest in habitat, it's possible to optimize operational efficiency of habitat delivery investments (where to invest, but also what types of programs to implement in each geography) to maximize impacts on populations. Although there certainly will be political and operational constraints to achieving this optimum, formalizing the process would be a substantial step forward with information already in hand.
A Model Worth Following
A Joint Venture Example: Central Hardwoods
The Central Hardwoods Joint Venture (CHJV) stood out as an exciting and somewhat unexpected example of habitat and population integration. The CHJV was established primarily for its continental importance to landbirds, yet the JV embraced an elaborate population-based planning effort for migrating and wintering waterfowl (see Fleming et al. 2019) that steps down NAWMP continental waterfowl objectives to habitat objectives for their geography. The CHJV further used available land cover to assess the state of the landscape relative to desired conditions for waterfowl. This provides a useful model for other JVs that have not yet integrated waterfowl population and habitat objectives.
