The Colony Island Network Design and Implementation tool (CINDI) will be a co-production between our team and coastal resource managers and other stakeholders, meaning that your input is essential to the success of the project. Therefore, with support from the Knobloch Family Foundation, we plan to develop such a tool for the Upper Laguna Madre, and then to expand to the other major bays in the Coastal Bend. But there is currently no tool that managers can use to gauge the relative benefit of projects to the state’s coastal waterbird populations.
Colony island rehabilitation is already underway in Texas and more projects are being planned. The Harte Research Institute, Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, and Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, have recently initiated a project to develop a spatial prioritization tool for rehabilitating a network of waterbird colony islands.
