Piping Plover Conservation and Additional Protections For Their Wintering Grounds

My project is on the effects that the increase in land development along the Gulf of Mexico over the past few decades has had on the winter habitat of the piping plover, a federally threatened species of shorebird. Because these birds have a high fidelity to certain areas of coast, any construction in or near their habitats affects them significantly. They want to continue to winter in the same places that they have for their whole lives, but that often becomes impossible. Even with their breeding grounds strictly controlled, alterations to wintering grounds have resulted in population fluctuations. I will be investigating the effects that things like gas and oil production, housing construction, and even agriculture have had on the piping plover through various types of maps, satellite imagery, data on plover abundance and location, and analysis done in other studies. I will then be able to give a recommendation for how to minimize the effects of land development in the future.