Something Old, Something New: One Biologist’s Ever-Evolving Work in Puerto Rico

Wildlife work is not static. Conditions shift, threats emerge, and new tools or technology can render prior strategies obsolete. It’s critical that conservationists keep a close eye on these changes and use this evidence to adapt their management strategies to have the maximum impact. In Puerto Rico, one of our biologists is putting this Evidence to Action Pipeline (a pillar of TPF Complete Conservation™) into practice to save rare hawks in the island territory.

A Sound Start to an Evolving Career in Puerto Rico

TPF Puerto Rico Field Coordinator Nashally Folch Mercado shares that her wildlife career began in an emerging field using emerging technology. “My work with wildlife began with bioacoustics,” she shares. Put simply, bioacoustics is the study of animal sounds. If you have the Merlin app on your phone, which records bird sounds and identifies the “vocalists” by comparing your recordings to a massive online database, that’s one example of bioacoustics.

“I was working with a company that was using automated recording units to monitor the presence or absence and dispersal of endemic and endangered species,” shares Nashally. As technology has improved, wildlife biologists are increasingly deploying these units (also known as ARUs) for this work. Whereas manual surveys require repeated site visits and can only collect data while a biologist is present, ARUs require just a single visit to deploy the unit and can then record data for months on end. But after several years of studying wildlife that she rarely saw or even heard herself, Nashally was ready for a change. “I wanted to do more active monitoring work.”

Soon enough, she found it—ironically, through a communication method hundreds of years old. “I heard about The Peregrine Fund’s Puerto Rican Sharp-shinned Hawk project through a newspaper article,“ she says. When a position opened up for the 2022 season, Nashally applied… and she’s been with us ever since.

Adapting the Approach, Improving the Outcome for Puerto Rican Hawks

Adaptive management remains essential to the work of Nashally and the rest of the TPF Puerto Rico team. Following a 2021 assessment that found an alarming population decline of 82%, we’ve ramped up our research on the Puerto Rican Broad-winged Hawk. Similarly, after analysis showed an unsustainable population trend, we restarted captive propagation efforts for the Puerto Rican Sharp-shinned Hawk in 2024 after a three-year hiatus. Nashally says these changes are already paying off.

“This season has been wonderful for us,” she reports. The Puerto Rican Broad-winged Hawk project is in its early stages, but Nashally says they still found six nests and learned a great deal of information about the birds’ diet and threats during the breeding season. “For the Puerto Rican Sharp-shinned Hawk, we managed to find 12 nesting pairs, and sighted around 50 individuals,” she continues. “From those 12 nesting pairs, 16 hawks fledged from wild nests and 11 more were raised at our propagation facility and released back into the wild.”

These forest raptors are far from being—pun intended—out of the woods, but considering they were teetering on the brink of extinction just a decade ago, it’s a clear example of the conservation impact that adaptive management can have. “These are the best numbers we’ve had since Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico back in 2017,” notes Nashally. “It’s proof and testament to the impact this project has on the future of these birds.”