Lori Johnson-Randall M.S. Woodrey J. Cox E. Ruelas I. C. M. Riley R.B. Hamilton C. Eberly Wylie C. Barrow Jr. 2005 <p>Millions of Nearctic-Neotropical landbirds move&nbsp;through the coastal forests of the Gulf of Mexico each&nbsp;spring and autumn as they migrate across and around&nbsp;the gulf. Migration routes in the gulf region are not&nbsp;static—they shift year to year and season to season&nbsp;according to prevailing wind patterns. Given the&nbsp;dynamic nature of migration routes, coastal forests&nbsp;around the Gulf of Mexico potentially can provide&nbsp;important stopover habitat to en route migrants. The&nbsp;coastal forests from the Florida Keys to the Yucatan&nbsp;Peninsula include a wide range of habitat types that we&nbsp;have classified as 19 broad community types. From&nbsp;literature reviews, we determined that the majority of&nbsp;these coastal habitats have been lost or degraded due to&nbsp;the effects of development, agriculture, livestock grazing, timber industry activities, and the spread of exotic&nbsp;species. The continued loss and degradation of coastal&nbsp;forests pose a risk to migrating birds, and thus we need&nbsp;to develop a conservation strategy that maximizes the&nbsp;suitability of the remaining forested patches around the&nbsp;gulf. An effective conservation strategy will require&nbsp;considerations at the gulf-wide, regional, landscape and&nbsp;habitat levels. These considerations should include migrant movement and landfall patterns, migrant use of&nbsp;inland versus coastal fringe stopover sites, the creation&nbsp;of landscape mosaics that incorporate patch size and&nbsp;inter-patch distance, and the availability of within habitat resources.</p> application/pdf en USDA Coastal forests of the Gulf of Mexico: A description and some thoughts on their conservation chapter