We now know that conserving shorebirds entails the enormous challenge of protecting the many far-flung international sites that shorebirds require in order to survive, from their breeding grounds in the Arctic to their wintering grounds in the Southern Hemisphere and their resting and refueling sites in between.

To address this critical problem, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) has teamed with Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences and the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN) to launch the Shorebird Recovery Project (SRP).

SRP's goal is to reverse downward trends for these birds and prevent their extinction before it is too late. Specifically, we want to sustain the populations of shorebirds at the levels called for in a number of shorebird conservation plans.

The task is enormous in scope and can only be accomplished by working collaboratively with many partners: academic and agency scientists, individual landowners including corporations, government officials at all levels, many partner conservation groups, and the funding community.

SRP in Action

SRP is working to restore shorebird populations and ecosystems around the world and is helping society achieve a sustainable future by:

• Providing the vision and leadership that led to the first U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan.
• Collaborating with network partners, such as the National Wildlife Refuge System, The Nature Conservancy, Rare Conservation, and BirdLife International to develop a high-leverage, focused, and science-driven approach to shorebird conservation.
• Promoting targeted conservation research on the causes of declines for high-priority species such as American Oystercatchers and Red Knots.
• Training shorebird managers throughout the hemisphere.
• Conducting on-the-ground conservation in Northwest Mexico and the Sea of Cortes, areas of enormous importance for shorebirds in our Pacific Flyway focal region project.
• Facilitating dedications that bring the entire local community together around a shorebird site.
• Creating shorebird-friendly rice agriculture at a hemispheric scale to use working wetlands as habitat and to create economic and social incentives for growers.
• Enabling the creation of a world-class Nature Interpretation Center at a key stopover site for Red Knots in Argentina.
• Providing the science that contributed to a revision of one of the largest wetland-protection funding programs in the continent, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.
• Creating resilient shorebird conservation sites in the face of climate change.
• Leading field research on important shorebird sites in the Arctic.

Click here to learn about some of the Shorebird Recovery Project's successes and opportunites.