Endangered Species Conservation and Management
Although almost all of our research has conservation implications, we also relish the opportunity to collaborate directly with agencies and others that carry out conservation and management. Through our ongoing work with the Kirtland’s Warbler, we regularly engage with state and federal wildlife managers and advise them through our involvement with the Kirtland’s Warbler Conservation Team. Close collaboration with USFWS in Michigan has also led to development of a new project focused on evaluating non-lethal methods to control Merlin populations in order to protect endangered Great Lakes Piping Plovers.
Key findings include:
Kirtland’s Warblers stopover in SE Georgia, Ohio, and Ontario during spring migration and in the fall take a more westerly route jumping off of the Carolina coasts and heading over water to The Bahamas (Cooper et al. 2017). Kirtland’s winter primarily in the central Bahamas with some birds found in Turks and Caicos and Cuba (Cooper et al. 2019).
Brown-headed cowbird populations have declined to the point where they no longer threaten breeding Kirtland’s Warblers, allowing suspension of the 40+ year cowbird trapping program (Cooper et al. 2019).
Kirtland’s Warbler populations can withstand parasitism rates of about 13-18% of nests per year before populations will decline (Margenau et al. 2022).
Mixed pine stands created for Kirtland’s Warblers may not provide equivalent quality habitat as traditional pure jack pine stands, but more monitoring data are needed (Cooper et al. 2024).