Evaluating changes in Piping Plover home ranges following coastal restoration at Whiskey Island and Caminada Headland, Louisiana from 2013 to 2019

Over time, barrier islands may become eroded and experience land loss, which require management actions to restore island integrity. The process of restoring barrier islands can create new habitats but also alter existing habitats, which can impact the organisms depending on coastal habitats, such as the Endangered Species Act-listed Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus). Therefore, we wanted to understand the response of Piping Plover to coastal restoration by analyzing potential home ranges changes in coastal Louisiana. We used resight data from banded birds to develop minimum convex polygons and kernel density estimates of individual Piping Plover home ranges to investigate whether spatiotemporal changes resulted from restoration activities at Whiskey Island and Caminada Headland, Louisiana. We quantified home range areas for the winter periods (July-May) that included seven seasons from 2013 to 2019 at Caminada Headland and five seasons from 2014 to 2018 at Whiskey island using 95% and 50% isopleths (i.e., polygons made up of 95% or 50% of resight instances, respectively) and compared changes between pre-restoration, active restoration, and post-restoration phases.