Every autumn, hundreds of thousands of shorebirds migrate along the Pacific Flyway in search of rest and food. For thousands of years, California’s Central Valley contained vast natural wetlands that provided migrating birds with places to rest and feed. Facing the ecological crisis, conservationists tried a market-based solution instead of buying land outright. One of the habitat incentive programmes assessed in the study, BirdReturns, provided temporary wetland habitat in flooded rice fields during periods of limited surface water in California's Central Valley. The strategy used satellite imagery to assess habitat conditions, while farmers submitted competitive bids to temporarily flood harvested rice fields during shorebird migration, turning agricultural land into temporary wetland habitat.
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