Recovery Plan Awareness Among South Florida Land-Use Decision-Makers

This study identified a challenge for natural resource communication: increasing awareness of species recovery plans among a key audience, local decision-makers. Under the Endangered Species Act, recovery plans are written to conserve threatened and endangered species and their ecosystems. For these plans to be successful, they must be integrated into local land-use decisions. A survey of landuse planners and regulators (N = 59) in the 19 counties of south Florida examined 1) exposure to information about threatened and endangered species, 2) awareness of the South Florida Multi-species Recovery Plan (MSRP), and 3) awareness of local threatened and endangered species. The results indicated decision-makers are receiving relatively little information about threatened and endangered species, have low awareness of the MSRP, and are only moderately aware of which threatened and endangered species occur in their counties. There is a need for better communication with local land-use decision-makers to increase awareness of recovery plans, the information they contain, and how to access them. Decisionmakers also reported being pressed for time, needing information that pertains specifically to their county, and having concerns about the quality of the available information. Recommendations for message strategy include developing condensed versions of the plan, organizing information by county, and providing information to help decision-makers evaluate the utility and limitations of recovery plan information and make appropriate interpretations. Future research should examine how best to communicate with decisionmakers in the context of recovery planning and other agricultural and natural resources issues

Variation in home range size and patterns in adult female American crocodiles Crocodylus acutus

The American crocodile Crocodylus acutus is a threatened species that uses relatively deep, open-water habitats with low salinity. Adult female American crocodiles nest on sandy coastal beaches, islands or human-made berms, assist in the hatching process, and can travel long distances to nesting habitat. We satellite-tracked 15 adult female American crocodiles in 2 hydrologically distinct areas in Everglades National Park, Florida, USA, to quantify the home range sizes, test for intraspecific differences in home range and core area size and structure, and identify important crocodile high-use areas. Overall home ranges (95% kernel density estimate; KDE) for adult female crocodiles in South Florida ranged from 30.0 to 141.9 km2 (mean ± SD, 84.4 ± 32.3 km2), and core areas (50% KDE) ranged from 4.7 to 27.4 km2 (17.8 ± 7.3 km2). We identified patterns in home range and core area overlap, seasonally shifting patterns in core area use, and the Fox Lake complex as an important crocodile high-use area. As the population of American crocodiles continues to grow and expand into new areas, it is important for conservation managers to understand individual crocodile habitat-use patterns and spatial resource requirements

Roseate spoonbill reproduction as an indicator for restoration of the Everglades and the Everglades estuaries

Ecological monitoring is key to successful ecosystem restoration. Because all components within an ecosystem cannot be monitored, it is important to select indicators that are representative of the system, integrate system responses, clearly respond to system change, can be effectively and efficiently monitored, and are easily communicated. The roseate spoonbill is one ecological indicator species that meets these criteria within the Everglades ecosystem. Monitoring of roseate spoonbills in Florida Bay over the past 70 years has shown that aspects of this species’ reproduction respond to changes in hydrology and corresponding changes in prey abundance and availability. This indicator uses nesting location, nest numbers and nesting success in response to food abundance and availability. In turn, prey abundance is a function of hydrological conditions (especially water depth) and salinity. Metrics and targets for these performance measures were established based on previous findings. Values of each metric were translated into indices and identified as stoplight colors with green indicating that a given target has been met, yellow indicating that conditions are below the target, but within an acceptable range of it, and red indicating the measure is performing poorly in relation to the target