Sanderling Plan - Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network

o identifying food/roost resources and habitat requirements;
o determining population trends for all flyways (requires improved monitoring
scheme);
o determining energetic and nutritional requirements; and
o questions that address management-related issues.
HABITAT REQUIREMENTS
Given persistent threats to Sanderling habitat (coastal/ beach development, habitat
degradation, sea-level rise, pollution, and human disturbances), research efforts should be
directed towards fully understanding habitat requirements, behavioral plasticity, and identifying
feeding and roosting areas during migration and winter. What prey and roost resources are
available to Sanderlings, and does the availability of those resources vary seasonally? How does
habitat use vary with increased predation/disturbance pressure? What is the availability of
alternative sites, should currently important sites be lost? Efforts should be made to map and
classify habitats at a range of spatial scales, in order to potentially link shorebird survival and use
of habitat with landscape structure (Fernandez and Lank 2008). Given this species’s tendency to
disperse during the nonbreeding season (and the potentially important social role of that
dispersal), habitat requirements should not be set according to minimum energetic requirements
(i.e., by providing a few hotpots), but rather by including important key sites as well as multiple
sites of moderate use/importance.
FOOD
To protect Sanderling food resources, research is needed to determine optimal
management techniques for promoting invertebrate (prey) resources; to develop a better
understanding of invertebrate management; and to develop and implement long-term monitoring
of significant prey populations (in selected areas). In the mid-Atlantic region, it is necessary to
understand how to maintain adequate and ecologically healthy populations of Horseshoe Crabs
(Clark and Niles 2000).
Additionally, research is needed to quantify the before/after effects (short- and long-term)
of various standard beach manipulation practices (e.g., beach scraping, beach nourishment, and
beach raking) on invertebrate prey populations.
WHSRN – Sanderling Conservation Plan, February 2010, v1.1 59