Assistant Manager
National Audubon Society's Gillmor Sanctuary
Bio:
Heidi Hoven is the assistant manager at National Audubon Society’s Gillmor Sanctuary. She is a wetland ecologist, having earned her PhD and MS from the University of New Hampshire with a special interest in saline systems and plant physiology, and a BS in Botany from the University of Rhode Island. Since moving to Utah, she founded a non-profit research institute to help inform policy regarding safeguarding the quality of wetlands for birds and other wildlife of GSL. She taught environmental studies at Weber State University as an adjunct and visiting research professor and brought many interns from local universities into the field to learn and help conduct her GSL ecological research. She developed strategies to improve managed, impounded wetlands of Great Salt Lake that are still used by managers today and spearheaded the development of a wildlife functional assessment of the Northwest Quadrant of Salt Lake City, which provided scientific rationale behind conservation of lands to buffer globally important wetlands of GSL for birds. She has conducted more than 20 years of research on Great Salt Lake wetland ecology, obtaining a broad understanding of the inter-relationships of habitat conditions and the flora and fauna that thrive in them. She brings this background to help improve and protect habitat for birds of GSL. She currently serves on the Steering Committees of the Northpoint Small Area Plan and Utah Department of Water Quality’s Utah Lake Water Quality Study. She is a board member of the International Dark Sky Association Utah Chapter, serving as co-chair of the lighting ordinance committee, where she works to reduce light pollution for migratory birds with GSL as their destination.
Title: Managed Shorebird Habitat in the Face of Climate Change
Abstract: Great Salt Lake is a Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN) Site of “Hemispheric Importance,” the highest level given to a site, supporting some 1.4 million shorebirds annually. However, this hemispheric destination for shorebirds is in jeopardy with current and future water development and use, coupled with diminished precipitation and increased temperatures resultant from climate change, thus managed shorebird habitat is becoming increasingly important for birds. As lake elevation hovers at historic lows and tributaries flush salts from surface sediment, natural mudflats of the lake bed have been invaded by the invasive Phragmites, converting open productive shorebird habitat to densely vegetated wetlands that are uninhabitable by shorebirds. Managed mudflats suffer the same threats of habitat loss. Freshwater inflows to the Lake that once teemed with up to hundreds of thousands of shorebirds are now a relic of the past, lost to the invasion of Phragmites and a diminishing Lake. Unless efforts to restore open mudflat where water sources can be managed in tandem with efforts to conserve and restore water of the Lake, these habitats will continue to decline. There is much to be learned of habitat needs for shorebirds at Great Salt Lake and how to manage wetlands in a way that supports the birds. This presentation explores the intersection of managing water to provide forage and habitat for shorebirds and bird response through the lens of Gillmor Sanctuary, the unpredictability of nature in a managed world, and implications for the future if we want to keep Great Salt Lake and its wetlands a WHSRN designated site.