Review Draft - North American Colonial Waterbird Conservation Plan

The North American Colonial Waterbird Conservation Plan provides an overarching framework for conserving and managing colonially-nesting aquatic birds throughout North America. It hopes to inspire conservation action for seabirds and colonial waterbirds from Canada through the Caribbean, from Bermuda to the Pacific Islands, in their nesting sites, on their annual migrations, and on their wintering grounds. It aims to facilitate continent-wide planning and monitoring, national-state-provincial conservation action, regional coordination, and local habitat protection that taken together will maintain healthy populations. The North American Colonial Waterbird Plan is the culmination of a multiyear process of collaborative deliberation on the most appropriate approaches and goals to conserve, throughout North America, populations of seabirds and other colonial waterbirds and the habitats on which they depend. The planning process was possible because of the engagement of hundreds of experts on biology, conservation, and management of colonial waterbirds. The North Colonial Waterbird American Plan is a framework, providing insight, goals, approaches, networks and infrastructure for waterbird conservation. Some implementation action is inherently continental in scale- such as coordinating continent-wide monitoring programs and dealing with widespread threats. Much implementation occurs at smaller scales. Following from this plan, Regional Colonial Waterbird Plans will facilitate conservation at regional, state,provincial, and local levels. In the end we hope to inspire and facilitate conserving seabirds and colonial waterbirds at their colony sites, feeding sites, at each park and refuge, in each state or province and in every region of North America.