About

Every year shorebirds breed on the Canadian Arctic tundra and winter along the eastern shores of South America, stopping over at a number of critical migratory sites in between along the east coast of the United States. These migrations are thousands of miles round trip. Species like the Red Knot fly nearly 20,000 miles a year for it’s annual migration. Thousands of those miles are non-stop over open ocean. Along the way these shorebirds face many threats – many of them caused by humans.

While the threats may vary, each site plays a critical role in shorebird survival. Therefore, effective conservation requires a wide-ranging approach to identify and reduce threats throughout the flyway. To be truly effective, such an approach must coordinate research, conservation, and management efforts of many groups across multiple political boundaries and consolidate resources. Only with a collaborative flyway-scale approach can we reverse the serious declines we are witnessing in many of our shorebird populations.

From Business Strategy to Initiative

Development of the Atlantic Flyway Shorebird Initiative culminated a multi-year effort involving multiple partners along the entire Atlantic Flyway – from Alaska to Argentina – to address declines in shorebirds. The Initiative grew to embrace a full-lifecycle Atlantic Flyway Shorebird Business Plan published in February 2015. This landmark Business Plan represents the full suite of strategies and actions needed to conserve 15 Atlantic Flyway shorebirds. Upon publication of the Business Plan, the AFSI is now poised to move from an ad-hoc effort of a loosely organized and highly effective group of individuals dedicated to shorebird conservation, to an Initiative that will benefit from a more formal structure. This formal structure is intended to implement the Business Plan in a more open and transparent manner, to improve communication and effectiveness of actions, and to help facilitate individuals actions to effect change in shorebird populations in the Atlantic Flyway. Check out the entire Atlantic Flyway Shorebird Initiative Business Plan.

Download Business Plan Executive Summary

• English
• French
• Portugese
• Spanish
• Dutch

Executive Committee

The AFSI is co-led by the Director, Bird Conservation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the Branch Chief, Populations, Migratory Birds, Northeast Region, US Fish and Wildlife Service. They nominated an Executive Committee, which is designed to be an oversight and facilitation group to help implement the AFSI and Business Plan. A critical component of the Executive Committee is to ensure coordination of all groups and activities to eliminate overlap or duplication of efforts. This group will help generate new ideas, approaches, partners, and will respond to new issues or controversies related to AFSI.

Core Team

Working Groups

Several working groups have formed to help guide AFSI and implement projects to achieve the ambitious goals of the partnership. Contact a group lead to get engaged!

• Habitat (subgroups: Coastal Engineering, Human Activities, Predation, & Incompatible Management)- Walker Golder (wgolder@audubon.org), and Sara Schweitzer (sara.schweitzer@ncwildlife.org)
• Flyway Engagement – Rob Clay (rclay@manomet.org)
• Resources/Funding – Rob Clay (rclay@manomet.org) and Walker Golder (wgolder@audubon.org)
• Communications – Deb Reynolds (debra_reynolds@fws.gov)
• Monitoring – Stephen Brown (sbrown@manomet.org)
• Hunting – Brad Andres (brad_andres@fws.gov) and David Mizrahi (david.mizrahi@njaudubon.org)

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