U.S. Fish & Wildlife ServiceThis is a DRAFT update to fix coastline issues These data depict areas of the U.S. where NAWCA projects should be developed and favored based on benefits to wetland-associated shorebirds. The idea is that protecting, enhancing, or restoring wetlands within these landscapes has greater value than conducting these same conservation activities outside the landscape boundary. Shorebirds include families of birds that dependent on wetland, grassland, and beach habitats to complete portions of their life cycles, such as, avocets and stilts, plovers, oystercatchers, sandpipers, and phalaropes. Technical Question #3 for the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) asks applicants to describe how the proposed grant and match activities will address the national and/or continental geographic priorities for wetland habitat conservation as outlined in the four major migratory bird conservation plans and makes reference to geographic priority maps for these bird groups. These data were compiled by the U.S. Shorebird Conservation Partnership in consultation with regional U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Migratory Bird biologists, state shorebird biologists, NGO shorebird experts, and staff of the bird habitat Joint Ventures to develop a national-scale map that depicts areas where habitat acquisition, enhancement, and restoration would yield the greatest benefits for the highest priority wetland-associated shorebird species. The original shorebird map illustrated coarse areas (i.e. blobs) of national importance to shorebirds (2004). These areas focused on wetland landscapes that were used by large numbers of migrant shorebirds (>20,000 individuals) or that supported high densities of breeding or wintering shorebirds. The landscape approach was chosen because of the geographic variability in shorebird use of discrete versus dispersed sites throughout the nation and the attempt to balance use during the breeding season with migration and wintering. The same landscape approach was used for the 2012 revision, with the goal of improving the usefulness of the coarse map. The 2004 "blob" map did not define very precisely the boundary of important areas. To remedy that problem, we used (generally) the EPA's Level IV Ecoregion boundaries, which are available for every state except Alaska and Hawaii. We produced state-scale maps designating refinements to the previous blob map for review. A 2024 update now includes important shorebird areas of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Maps originate from one national, scalable shapefile that will be available to applicants and other users. Although the idea of providing levels of importance to sites (e.g., WHSRN categories) has been previously considered, we believe the complexity would be difficult to portray on a single map, particularly considering the differences between breeding and migrations sites discussed above. Regional importance of sites to shorebirds is assessed separately as a second part of Technical Question #3.ArcGIS FeatureLayerhttps://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/d32cbb6f91224bc2958288e00c260331_4engU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open DataPublicShorebird Priority Areas NAWCA 2026 update [United States]Web servicesUnited States2026