We are excited to announce the 2025 Appalachian Mountains Joint Venture Science and Delivery Committee Annual Workshop (formerly Technical Committee), taking place September 16-18, 2025, at Breaks Interstate Park, located along the Virginia-Kentucky border. A virtual attendance option will also be available for those unable to join us in person.

We have a packed agenda designed to advance our collaborative science, strengthen partnerships, and explore practical conservation applications across the AMJV region.

Registration & Lodging

• Please register by August 29th using this form: https://forms.gle/DKGvpdPo9fPFrCcP7
• Discounted lodging available at Breaks Interstate Park Lodge — reserve by August 15th by calling 276-865-4413 and mentioning the Appalachian Mountains Joint Venture block.

Virtual Meeting Information

• Link to virtual meeting available in SciDel Meeting Full Agenda 2025

Agenda

Tuesday, September 16 – Motus Workshop

Learn about and gain experience with the components, operation, maintenance, and trouble-shooting of existing Motus stations. This workshop is open to any attendees, but participation from staff of partners with a primary role in supporting Motus in the AMJV geography is prioritized. The workshop will include both an indoor classroom and outdoor hands-on component. In-person only.

Wednesday, September 17 – Committee Meeting Day 1

8:00 am: Arrival and Networking

8:15 am – Welcome and Logistics, Zoom Meeting Launch

8:30 am – 2:00 pm: Focus on Motus

8:30 am: Traveling with Eastern Towhees: Tracking Migration Timing and Pathways of a Declining Songbird. Michelle A. Eshleman, Willistown Conservation Trust and the University of Delaware

Eastern Towhees (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) are considered a short distance migrant, but no published migration pathways or distances of individual birds exist for this species. Our team placed Motus Wildlife Tracking System radio-transmitting tags on 187 towhees to track them for a full year to gather information on migration timing and pathways. We found that breeding birds located in our more eastern sites migrate into the coastal plain of the Delmarva peninsula while birds at more western sites migrate a longer distance to overwinter near the Carolinas.

9 am: Range-wide Wood Thrush Motus Project: Partnerships and Research at Scale. Sarah Kendrick, USFWS

The Wood Thrush is a priority bird species in 25 U.S. states and Canada that has shown declines in population for the last 25 years. Improving our understanding of the species’ full life cycle ecology, including migration patterns between their breeding and nonbreeding ranges, is essential in order to better understand the species’ conservation needs throughout its range and to improve the design of targeted habitat management actions. With that in mind, an international group of bird-conservation partners are conducting a hemispheric research and conservation project Motus-tagging Wood Thrush across their breeding and nonbreeding ranges. Nearly 1,000 Motus tags have been deployed to better understand migratory connections, routes, timing, and survival across their full life cycle. The project continues, but Sarah will outline how the project came to be, is being coordinated, and what we hope to learn.

9:30 am: New methods to improve inference from Motus data at broad and fine spatial scales. Authors: Cody Cox1*, Nancy Raginski1,2, and Clark Rushing1

1Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia 2Migratory Bird Center, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, *presenting

The Motus network has revolutionized our understanding of migration patterns and space use of small-bodied songbirds. Incorporating new statistical approaches will improve inferences from Motus data. We have developed a new model to optimize Motus tower placement on a landscape to maximize detections of migrating individuals and have pioneered a new method for analyzing localization data from node arrays to improve local space use estimates.

10 am: Break

10:15 am: Developing Forestry Standards for Nonbreeding Migratory Birds. Jeff Ritterson, Mass Audubon

The conservation of Nearctic-Neotropical migratory birds during the stationary nonbreeding period requires land use practices that support both economic activity and biodiversity.  Sustainable logging may be an option, but studies to date have only compared logged versus unlogged areas, have only examined species richness or abundance, and little information exists on migratory birds.  Using a combination of constant-effort mist netting, manual hand-tracking telemetry, and the Motus Wildlife Tracking System, we collected data across a gradient of logging intensity for a range of metrics to develop forestry practices that support the avian community, with an emphasis on Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina).

10:45 am: Motus in the Neotropics: exploring non-breeding ecology in a rapidly expanding network. Nick Bayly, SELVA

11:15: Facilitated Discussion of Motus research questions, needs, and study design questions. Todd Alleger and Garrett Rhyne, American Bird Conservancy

12 pm – 1:30 pm Lunch

1:30 – 2:00 pm Facilitated Motus Discussion, Continued

2 pm – 2:30 pm Forests for Birds and People: Introduction to Partnership Project between AMJV and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Emily Cohen, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES)

This partnership project between AMJV and UMCES will bring together lidar, meteorological surveillance radar, and interpretable machine learning to incorporate the habitat needs of birds in the Appalachian Mountains during both breeding and migratory stopover into conservation planning. Using a translational ecology approach, a forest management plan will be developed collaboratively by researchers, local forest practitioners, conservation professionals and residents, integrating the needs of local human communities along with those of birds.

2:30 pm – Break

2:45 pm – 4:00 pm  Review and Discussion of AMJV Species Monitoring Decision Tree Tool

• Overview of tool prototype by Monitoring Team members
• Discussion and Feedback session:
  • Balancing needs – informing brand new monitoring efforts while providing guidelines to improve existing efforts?
  • How much detail to include about the analysis and modeling options – i.e. the post data collection steps?
  • Balancing audience – designing for individuals new to monitoring vs. those with experience
    • Who should be the primary target audience?
  • How best to use this tool to demonstrate linkages between small-scale monitoring (project-specific) and AMJV-wide monitoring needs?

5 pm Elk Reintroduction Field Visit (Dinner Included)

An informative guided bus tour of Virginia’s Elk Restoration zone by VA DWR and Breaks Interstate Park staff. We will visit the original release site approximately 30 minutes from the park where they will view the herd that is the result of Virginia’s restoration effort that started in 2012.

Thursday, September 18 – Committee Meeting Day 2

7:30 am (optional): Field Demonstration of Hand-tracking

Garrett Rhyne will offer a demonstration of the use of a handheld receiver to manually locate birds tagged with Motus nanotags.

8:45 am Zoom Meeting Launch

9:00 – 10:00 am  Progress Updates from Full Annual Cycle (FAC) Team

AMJV’s FAC Team is currently focused on expanding our partnership and developing large collaborative research and applied conservation projects across the Americas for AMJV priority species. We have a number of projects in development and underway and are excited to get your feedback on them.

Large-scale collaborative projects:

• FAC Project Database
• Tagging projects (KEWA, WEWA, etc)
• Migratory Stopover Project
• FAC funding mechanisms

10 am Break

10:15 – 11:00 am: Joint Venture-Cornell Collaboration Updates

• Review and Discussion of new resources available from the eBird Status and Trend (EST) team
  • Overview of widely available resources and update schedule from Cornell’s EST team
  • Case study: using the AMJV-specific data products to illustrate ‘boutique’ analysis options
    • Relative abundance & population trend models
    • Raster-stacking to identify regional areas of importance for key habitats and/or species guilds
  • (If time) How JV’s are working to integrate these tools into species & habitat objective setting

11:00 am – 12:00 pm: Discussion of Revised AMJV Species Prioritization Process

• Review of Partner Survey Results
• Discussion of proposed prioritization process
• Setting direction for next steps of monitoring team in prioritization process

1:30 pm – 3 pm (optional): Discussion for Regional Partners on Collaboration in the Coal Fields 

Learn about AMJV’s new initiative focused on the coal fields, and how we envision fostering collaboration between conservation efforts and community and economic development. Using examples from the Pine Mountain region like the elk reintroduction and the Pine Mountain Trail, we’ll discuss opportunities to promote economic development while delivering meaningful conservation outcomes.