6 thoughts on “American Golden Plover (Pluvialis dominica)”
Description of passage migration route applies mostly to spring; many/most birds make a transatlantic flight from the north Atlantic coast directly to South America or Caribbean in fall (when described hunting take would occur). Spring passage is protracted and relies on grassland and agricultural habitats that can shift dynamically between years, implying habitat availability on spring passage may be a strong influence on survival.
PRISM surveys in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge between 2002/2004 and 2019/2022 did not show a significant trend, although point estimates increased (2002/2004: 15,686, SE=3,340; 2019/2022: 20,391, SE = 5,393). A similar survey in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area in north central Alaska showed a slight increase in number of individuals detected in 2007/2008 (42) to 2023 (45). We plan to do another year of surveys in this area before generating population estimates that can be used to evaluate population-level wide change in this location.
As mentioned by a previous responder, surveying American Golden-plovers along the Atlantic Coast has potential issues given the species primarily conducts a Trans Atlantic flight from eastern Canada to northeastern Brazil, bypassing most of the East Coast of North America. The exception to this is when birds migrate inland to avoid tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, it is difficult to interpret any trend data originating from the Smith et al. (2023) survey summary.
Threats faced by the species during northward migration through central South and North America may predispose the birds to contaminants in agricultural fields and turf farms used by the species. Conversion of grasslands to palm and rice farms in the Beni Savannah of Bolivia and the Llanos region of Colombia and Venezuela may also hamper the species.
Map comment: passage migration routes are pretty useless for a visual assessment of where the birds are in space.
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested in commenting. The window for consultation is now closed and we are unable to accept any more comments until 3 May 2024. We will now analyse and interpret all information, and we will post a preliminary decision on this species’ Red List status on this page on 3 May 2024, when discussions will re-open.
Thanks to all for the helpful comments received. The difficulty in interpreting the relevance of the declines reported by Smith et al. (2023) was reflected in the proposal to assess the species at Near Threatened, to allow the possibility that a moderately rapid reduction has taken place. That the Alaskan Breeding Bird Survey data mirrored this trend suggested this was a reasonable if precautionary assessment. However, the observation that the BBS trend for Alaska since 2014 has been positive is given added importance with the data from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge supplied by Richard Lanctot in the comment above. Together, these data reduce the uncertainty in the assessment and suggest that while a decline may have taken place, the rate of any reduction over the past three generations was not likely to approach thresholds for listing as threatened. Based on available information therefore, our preliminary proposal for the 2024 Red List would be to list American Golden Plover as Least Concern.
There is now a period for further comments until the final deadline on 13 May 2024, after which the recommended categorisations will be put forward to IUCN.
The final 2024 Red List categories will be published on the BirdLife and IUCN websites in October 2024, following further checking of information relevant to the assessments by both BirdLife and IUCN.
It is among the most numerous nearctic migrants in the sub-region Nhecolândia Pantanal, where it occurs almost exclusively in wet meadows. These wintering sites are under threat due to the replacement of native pastures by exotic grasses, climate change (extreme droughts) and changes in the flooding regime due to the waterway project on the Paraguay River
Description of passage migration route applies mostly to spring; many/most birds make a transatlantic flight from the north Atlantic coast directly to South America or Caribbean in fall (when described hunting take would occur). Spring passage is protracted and relies on grassland and agricultural habitats that can shift dynamically between years, implying habitat availability on spring passage may be a strong influence on survival.
The stop over sites of this shorebird in Colomba has been impacted by the urbanization, mostly in the Andean región where this shorebird was common (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236111352_Phenology_of_southward_shorebird_migration_through_the_Popayan_Plateau_Andes_of_Colombia). Poorly known the migration of this shorebird in the Amazon región of Colombia where it occurs but the impact of the gold mining could have impacted their stop over sites in the Amazon river basin.
PRISM surveys in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge between 2002/2004 and 2019/2022 did not show a significant trend, although point estimates increased (2002/2004: 15,686, SE=3,340; 2019/2022: 20,391, SE = 5,393). A similar survey in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area in north central Alaska showed a slight increase in number of individuals detected in 2007/2008 (42) to 2023 (45). We plan to do another year of surveys in this area before generating population estimates that can be used to evaluate population-level wide change in this location.
As mentioned by a previous responder, surveying American Golden-plovers along the Atlantic Coast has potential issues given the species primarily conducts a Trans Atlantic flight from eastern Canada to northeastern Brazil, bypassing most of the East Coast of North America. The exception to this is when birds migrate inland to avoid tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, it is difficult to interpret any trend data originating from the Smith et al. (2023) survey summary.
Threats faced by the species during northward migration through central South and North America may predispose the birds to contaminants in agricultural fields and turf farms used by the species. Conversion of grasslands to palm and rice farms in the Beni Savannah of Bolivia and the Llanos region of Colombia and Venezuela may also hamper the species.
Map comment: passage migration routes are pretty useless for a visual assessment of where the birds are in space.
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested in commenting. The window for consultation is now closed and we are unable to accept any more comments until 3 May 2024. We will now analyse and interpret all information, and we will post a preliminary decision on this species’ Red List status on this page on 3 May 2024, when discussions will re-open.
Preliminary proposal
Thanks to all for the helpful comments received. The difficulty in interpreting the relevance of the declines reported by Smith et al. (2023) was reflected in the proposal to assess the species at Near Threatened, to allow the possibility that a moderately rapid reduction has taken place. That the Alaskan Breeding Bird Survey data mirrored this trend suggested this was a reasonable if precautionary assessment. However, the observation that the BBS trend for Alaska since 2014 has been positive is given added importance with the data from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge supplied by Richard Lanctot in the comment above. Together, these data reduce the uncertainty in the assessment and suggest that while a decline may have taken place, the rate of any reduction over the past three generations was not likely to approach thresholds for listing as threatened. Based on available information therefore, our preliminary proposal for the 2024 Red List would be to list American Golden Plover as Least Concern.
There is now a period for further comments until the final deadline on 13 May 2024, after which the recommended categorisations will be put forward to IUCN.
The final 2024 Red List categories will be published on the BirdLife and IUCN websites in October 2024, following further checking of information relevant to the assessments by both BirdLife and IUCN.
It is among the most numerous nearctic migrants in the sub-region Nhecolândia Pantanal, where it occurs almost exclusively in wet meadows. These wintering sites are under threat due to the replacement of native pastures by exotic grasses, climate change (extreme droughts) and changes in the flooding regime due to the waterway project on the Paraguay River