Travel with Manomet’s Stephen Brown via the Arctic Blog

We are pleased to welcome home our friend and colleague Dr. Stephen Brown, Director of Shorebird Science at Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, from weeks of fieldwork in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. He and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) colleagues recently wrapped up their final survey of shorebird staging areas along the refuge’s vast coastline. This field season completes a multi-year effort to measure shorebird abundance at all of the major river deltas to determine, among other things, the most important areas for shorebirds. Stephen gave frequent updates from the field through Manomet’s Arctic Blog, where you can listen to his podcast reports and view photos and maps. Through this Web feature, we all can travel with Stephen and crew through the Arctic as they persevere on a typical day outside of the office – complete with polar bears, boat repairs, remote base camps, extreme and changeable weather, and yes, shorebirds! Visit the Arctic Blog.

We also welcome home another friend and colleague Trevor Lloyd-Evans, Director of Manomet’s bird banding program, who was part of the Arctic crew again this field season. Trevor’s fieldwork primarily focused on conducting avian influenza testing with Service colleagues as part of a larger, ongoing study coordinated among partners across Alaska and the lower 48 states.