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Opportunity Summary:

This grant opportunity, listed under the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Establishment Act (16 U.S.C. 3701-3709), is a discretionary, single-source financial assistance award intended for the College of William and Mary. It was posted by the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (DOI-FWS) as a notification-only announcement, meaning it is not a competitive solicitation open to multiple applicants. The funding opportunity number is F16AS00236, and the program is associated with CFDA 15.663. The listing shows an award ceiling of up to $600,000 and anticipates one award, with a closing date of May 25, 2016 (the same as the original closing date), and a creation and posting date of May 20, 2016.

The project focus is shorebird harvest and survival along the Atlantic Flyway, specifically targeting Whimbrels, a migratory shorebird that has shown recent population declines. The central problem the project is trying to solve is identifying when and where mortality is occurring during the Whimbrel annual cycle. While the decline is believed to be tied to mortality during key windows of the year, pinpointing losses has been difficult, especially during the fall migration and wintering periods. A major concern highlighted in the announcement is the role of both legal and illegal hunting during these times, which could be contributing to population-level impacts but is hard to quantify without detailed movement and fate information from individual birds.

The opportunity description lays out the species migration route and where the birds are thought to be most vulnerable. Whimbrels breeding on the Mackenzie Delta face potential hunting pressure at several points: first, on staging areas in Atlantic Canada; second, when storms force birds down in parts of the West Indies during fall migration, with specific mention of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago; and third, during wintering along the northern coast of South America, including Brazil, French Guiana, and Suriname. Birds that survive the winter typically depart South America in March, then stage around the Gulf of Mexico, particularly Texas, before making a transcontinental flight back to breeding grounds. By mapping this chain of locations and timing, the project is structured to detect where disappearances occur and whether losses cluster in periods and places consistent with hunting exposure or other hazards.

Methodologically, the project intends to isolate fall and winter mortality rates by deploying satellite transmitters on Whimbrels during their staging period in Atlantic Canada and then tracking those individuals through the rest of their annual cycle. The request is to fund the deployment and monitoring of 3 to 4 satellite transmitters, which would be combined with additional transmitter units supported by other sources to reach a total of about 10 to 12 satellite-tagged birds. The resulting movement tracks would then be analyzed together with 14 other existing tracks, building a larger dataset that can be used to evaluate survival and mortality patterns relative to exposure during critical periods of the life cycle. In practical terms, if multiple tagged birds stop transmitting or show mortality signals shortly after arriving in specific regions or during specific time windows, the researchers can begin to infer where risk is highest and when management interventions might matter most.

In addition to satellite tracking, the project also proposes deploying 20 nanotags. These are intended to capture finer-scale, local movement data within Atlantic Canada and to help detect individuals that arrive in coastal Texas after wintering in northern South America. Incorporating nanotag detections is meant to strengthen the ability to confirm onward migration and survival, and to increase the sample of birds that can be evaluated for overwinter mortality. By combining satellite telemetry (broad, long-distance tracking) with nanotag-based monitoring (local movement and detection at receiving stations), the project aims to reduce uncertainty about whether missing birds died, changed routes, or simply went undetected.

Overall, the grant announcement describes a targeted research and monitoring effort designed to produce actionable information about Whimbrel survival across the Atlantic Flyway and connected migratory corridors. The intended outcome is a clearer understanding of mortality timing and location during fall migration and wintering, with an emphasis on assessing the potential impact of hunting pressure in the regions identified as high concern. The legal authority cited, the single-recipient structure, and the science-and-technology research category all align with a focused federal investment in wildlife conservation science intended to guide future management decisions for a declining migratory shorebird population.

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