BRAZIL – This fall, Deanna Williams, wildlife program lead for the Siuslaw National Forest and Region 6 shorebird coordinator, traveled to Brazil where she joined NGO and university partners from the United States, Brazil, Peru and Colombia on a boat survey of shorebirds along the Amazon River.

The objective of the trip was to learn more about shorebirds’ use of the Amazon on their migratory journey. New shorebird research has highlighted the importance of Amazonian sandbanks, beaches and inundated grasslands for migratory shorebirds. Finding ways to understand this phenomenon is an incredible challenge as the Amazon Basin includes 6,437 km of the Amazon River mainstem and over 1,100 tributaries spread across eight countries.

“We saw purple martins and barn swallows and many species of shorebird from North America. We also saw sanderlings, which is cool as our dunes area qualifies as an area of regional importance for sanderlings under WHSRN (Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network),” said Williams.

The Forest Service International Programs Office is supporting an effort to survey shorebird use of the Amazon to better understand what habitat interventions could improve shorebird survival. The dozens of species of shorebirds that migrate down the coasts of North and South America and into the Amazon basin have undergone significant declines in the past three decades. The surveys will provide essential knowledge on the habitat areas shorebirds require and establish baseline data that can be used to monitor population changes over time.

“As biologists in North America,” Williams reflected, “we tend to focus conservation efforts on nesting, eggs laid, babies hatched, juveniles fledged. This makes logical sense as it would seem that the more babies are produced the higher likelihood some of them will survive and return to breed. Being in the Amazon showed that often these birds are in very small groups or even by themselves. The odds of them surviving their first migration seems overwhelming giving the sparse resources, ever changing dynamics of the system and the fast pace of human induced change. For me, I began to understand that perhaps making sure that juveniles and breeding females are fit for migration and have enough social support to make it to their wintering grounds could be a novel emphasis of conservation in North America.”

Williams hopes to apply this knowledge to her work in Region 6 by investigating how critical resources can be provided to birds not just during breeding, but also during pre-migration staging and migratory stop overs. Understanding this and providing for it in western forests and coastlines may help provide a missing piece of the puzzle as to why birds are declining with no obvious decrease in nesting success. 

The USDA Forest Service has a long history of working together with partners in Brazil on the management and conservation of protected areas and the livelihoods of people near them. Collaborative efforts such as this survey demonstrate our interconnectedness over vast distances and diverse landscapes. As a result of her experience s during this trip, Williams plans to continue her engagement with other scientists working on the Amazon survey to help provide a more complete picture of flyway wide conservation efforts.