AVIAN MOVEMENTS AND WETLAND CONNECTIVITY IN LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION

The current conservation crisis calls for research and management to b e carried out on a long-term, multi-species basis at large spatial sca les. Unfortunately, scientists, managers, and agencies often are stymi ed in their effort to conduct these large-scale studies because of a l ack of appropriate technology, methodology, and funding. This issue is of particular concern in wetland conservation, for which the standard landscape approach may include consideration of a large tract of land but fail to incorporate the suite of wetland sites frequently used by highly mobile organisms such as waterbirds (e.g., shorebirds, wading birds, waterfowl). Typically, these species have population dynamics t hat require use of multiple wetlands, but this aspect of their life hi story has often been ignored in planning for their conservation. We ou tline theoretical, empirical, modeling, and planning problems associat ed with this issue and suggest solutions to some current obstacles. Th ese solutions represent a tradeoff between typical in-depth single-spe cies studies and more generic multi-species studies. They include stud ying within- and among-season movements of waterbirds on a spatial sca le appropriate to both widely dispersing and more stationary species; multi-species censuses at multiple sites; further development and use of technology such as satellite transmitters and population-specific m olecular markers; development of spatially explicit population models that consider within-season movements of waterbirds; and recognition f rom funding agencies that landscape-level issues cannot adequately be addressed without support for these types of studies.