Offshore Wind Energy & Shorebird Migratory Connectivity in the Gulf of Mexico

The US is accelerating offshore wind energy development to achieve its climate goals, including in the Gulf of Mexico. Though the US is considering impacts to whales, seabirds, turtles, and bats during development and deployment, it has spent comparatively less effort considering the impact on shorebirds. Concurrently, American shorebirds are in severe decline, with population reductions of over 35% since 1970. Thus, the rapid decarbonization of the US energy supply through offshore wind poses potential collision and displacement risk for a group of species of conservation concern. Tracking data, like those curated by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center’s Shorebird Science and Conservation Collective, can provide critical insight to address this complex conservation issue. The Shorebird Collective is a partnership of more than 70 scientists who have contributed tracking data collected from over 3,330 individual shorebirds of 36 species to inform on-the-ground conservation. This data could be used to prioritize conservation efforts including the purchasing of habitat or securing water access in critical stopover sites and to help managers identify the impacts of conservation action at different points along the flyway. This presentation presents initial results from a subset of the Collective’s dataset to show how shorebird migration connects US offshore wind lease areas to other ecosystems spread across the Americas. In conducting this analysis, we hope to not only inform wind energy siting considerations in the Gulf, but too also provide initial insight into potential mitigation measures, whereby negative impacts to shorebirds could be “offset” by habitat restoration elsewhere along the migratory corridor. In so doing, the Shorebird Collective serves a vital bridging function between scientists and conservation stakeholders by organizing and applying knowledge from shorebird science to address urgent conservation questions.