Northern New Zealand dotterel are classified as a Conservation Dependent species, this means that without human help they will go extinct (usually because of predation from introduced predators like rats & cats). So how do you know if your local dotterel are going extinct or not?
Well first you need to work out their productivity rate. Productivity is measured by the average number of chicks fledged per breeding pair (per season). Chicks divided by adults. So if you had two pairs and they fledged one chick you can say the site averaged half a chick (0.5) per pair.
Management is considered effective if productivity values are greater than 0.5 for three consecutive years or longer (Dowding & Davis, 2007).
I help manage dotterel at three sites, I can not claim effective management and any of them. This means that over time these sites are a population sink. It’s important to track and share this metric to help conserve the species.