Conserving migratory or wide-ranging species presents considerable challenges, as these individuals move across disparate jurisdictions often crossing international borders among crucial stages of their annual cycle. Within North America, Migratory Bird Joint Ventures (JVs) have established successful partnerships to coordinate the planning and delivery of conservation actions within key regions to benefit migratory bird populations. However, the extent to which local conservation actions influence regional demographics and in turn affect continental population dynamics remains poorly understood. Maximizing efficient use of limited resources to conserve habitats for wide-ranging species has motivated a critical need to develop modeling frameworks to evaluate effects of local-scale conservation decisions on population demographics in the face of stressors such as climate and landscape change. This is especially relevant to the North American LCC network with its focus on cross-taxa conservation among multiple LCCs.
Migratory waterfowl species provide an excellent model system with which to develop this framework, as they are not only highly valued by the public but there also exists annual datasets on population demographics throughout their ranges.
