This afternoon, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and the State of Florida announced that Audubon Florida will be receiving a grant under NFWF’s new Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund (GEBF) to help restore coastal bird populations in the Florida Panhandle.
This funding will complement our existing coastal bird management in the region, allowing us to:
- post, monitor, manage and steward more beach-nesting bird sites;
- monitor passage and wintering birds to inform new protections;
- undertake a major restoration of the Panhandle’s largest seabird rookery island;
- install road mortality abatement measures at key nesting sites adjacent to busy surface roads;
- implement a monitoring and management program for rooftop nesting terns;
- team up with Florida Park Service researchers on a banding study of beach-nesting bird use and best management practices at District 1 parks;
- support SUNY research modeling Snowy Plover survival at Gulf Islands National Seashore as well as assessing roadkill mortality at the seashore; and
- provide critical education and outreach to boaters, law enforcement, beach professionals and others enlisting their help in protecting birds and their habitat.
Florida projects supported with this first round of GEBF funding are focused primarily on the Panhandle whose beaches were oiled during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. We are hopeful that success in these Panhandle projects will demonstrate what Audubon Florida has asserted in our vision for Gulf-wide restoration: This level of support for coastal bird management is effective, warranted, and should be funded perpetually, Gulf-wide from restoration dollars.
