Pop-up Wetlands Will Help Millions of Migrating Birds This Fall

Birds migrating south from the Arctic this fall will have access to 7,000 new acres of temporary wetland habitat for their California stopovers, according to researchers with NASA, The Nature Conservancy, and other academic and conservation organizations.  The BirdReturns program creates “pop-up habitats” — temporarily flooded rice fields — for some of the millions of sandpipers, plovers, and other shorebirds that migrate each year from their summer Arctic breeding grounds to winter homes in California, Mexico, and Central and South America.

More than 90 percent of the natural wetlands in the Central Valley of California have been lost to development, agriculture, and the state's severe drought, researchers say.  By combining on-the-ground observations and NASA satellite data, researchers can identify areas where birds flocked during previous migrations.  Matching the location and timing of the pop-up wetland habitats with the route and timing of migrating shorebirds is critical, researchers say, and the BirdReturns program identifies those key sites.  Rice farmers can submit bids based on how much it would cost them to temporarily flood their fields.  The Nature Conservancy then pays farmers in key migration areas to flood their fields for specific two-week periods, creating the pop-up habitats for migrating birds.

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