2022 NGO Special Recognition Award – Florida Audubon

Audubon Florida is nominated for the NGO Special Recognition Award for its role in protecting Florida’s beach-nesting birds. Florida’s coastline is nearly as long as the rest of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard, making protection of wildlife on its shores a daunting and logistically challenging task. This challenge is exacerbated by the threats faced by Florida’s coastal wildlife, which includes disturbance from millions of beach goers, predators attracted to the food-subsidized landscape, overwash and habitat loss associated with sea level rise and storm events, and anthropogenic disasters such as oil spills. These threats have resulted in long-term population declines of beach-nesting birds, and four species are currently listed as state-threatened.

Audubon Florida has been engaged in shorebird conservation for decades and was part of an early beach-nesting bird conservation partnership that coalesced in Tampa Bay in 2002. They were a foundational partner of the Florida Shorebird Alliance, which formed in 2009 and in a series of regional volunteer-driven partnerships throughout Florida that protect beach-nesting birds. Audubon’s efforts expanded in 2014 with support from funds associated with the Deep Water Horizon settlement and expanded again in 2017 when the National Fish and Wildlife Federation supported the development of a comprehensive beach-nesting bird conservation, monitoring, and management program. Throughout this time Audubon has closely partnered with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to leverage its expertise and capacity and to ensure that its efforts were fully coordinated with other key stakeholders.

Human disturbance to beach-nesting birds is an especially pervasive threat, as coastal birds have increasingly small spaces to eat, sleep, and reproduce. Audubon Florida has long recognized this threat and has been working to reduce disturbance to beach-nesting birds by using signage and symbolic fencing to limit disturbance. Audubon employs stewards and recruits, trains, and deploys >750 volunteer bird stewards at high priority colonies of nesting seabirds to educate beach goers and ensure that birds are given the space they need to breed. Audubon’s efforts do not stop at the water’s edge; Audubon works with numerous property owners to manage and protect imperiled shorebirds and seabirds that nest on hundreds of rooftops near Florida’s coast. Their employees and volunteers return fallen chicks to rooftop colonies, monitor nesting outcomes, and engage in outreach and education with property owners. Outreach and education are a core component of Audubon’s overall shorebird conservation activities, with >55,000 people engaged annually.

Audubon Florida has long been the first line of defense for beach-nesting birds, and their efforts have been instrumental in halting the declines of some of Florida’s most imperiled avian species. The value of their advocacy, outreach, monitoring, and science-based management cannot be overstated; many Florida’s beach-nesting bird populations are still extant because of Audubon Florida.