Wire cages (exclosures) that exclude nest predators are regularly used for management of federally threatened and endangered populations of piping plovers (Charadrius melodus) and similar species. However, recent evidence that apparent nest abandonment related to exclosure use is indicative of adult mortality has led to concern about the technique. We developed a decision support tool named PiperEx that uses site‐specific nest‐fate data to inform a stochastic population projection model to predict population growth rate at the site level with and without exclosure use. Underlying PiperEx is a Bayesian logistic‐exposure multinomial nest fate model, with informative priors based on analysis of 1,312 piping plover nests monitored throughout the U.S. Atlantic Coast in 2015 and 2016. We used simulated nest fate data sets and real nest data from 3 management areas from 2013 to 2018 to test tool performance. Based on simulations, the probability of making the correct decision increased with sample size, exceeding 80% with 20 nests. Decisions recommended by the tool were robust to variation in demographic parameters. Using real data, the decision for a given year only matched the decision for the immediately previous year 16% to 67% of the time, whereas data pooled across years predicted the best decision for a particular year up to 100% of the time for a given area. We used a case study of Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge to demonstrate that the optimal decision is sensitive to how a site was defined. We recommend that data for PiperEx be collected on an annual basis, and data for the previous 5 or 6 years be pooled for making a decision at the start of the season. Further development of the tool should focus on its use to make regional recommendations, and use of multiple years of data to improve the capability of the tool to make robust site‐specific recommendations. © 2020 The Wildlife Society.

中文翻译：

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决策支持工具，用于指导巢式附件的使用，以保护管道P子

笼巢捕食者除外的铁丝笼（附件）通常用于管理受到联邦威胁和濒危的管道over（Charadrius melodus））和类似的物种。但是，最近的证据表明，与使用放养有关的明显的巢舍遗弃表明成年人死亡，这引起了对该技术的关注。我们开发了一个名为PiperEx的决策支持工具，该工具使用特定于站点的嵌套命运数据来告知随机人口预测模型，以预测在使用和不使用私有数据的情况下，站点级别的人口增长率。底层PiperEx是一个贝叶斯逻辑-暴露多项式巢式命运模型，其先验信息基于2015年和2016年在整个美国大西洋海岸监视的1,312个管道pl巢的分析，我们使用了模拟的巢式命运数据集和来自3个管理区域的真实巢式数据从2013年到2018年测试工具性能。根据模拟，做出正确决定的可能性随样本数量的增加而增加，超过80％有20个巢穴。该工具推荐的决策对于人口统计参数的变化非常有力。使用实际数据，给定年份的决策仅与前一年的决策匹配16％到67％的时间，而跨年度汇总的数据预测特定年份的最佳决策最多可达到100％的时间。给定区域。我们以埃德温·福赛斯（Edwin B. Forsythe）国家野生动物保护区为例，研究表明最佳决策对站点的定义非常敏感。我们建议每年收集PiperEx的数据，并汇总前5或6年的数据，以便在季节开始时做出决定。该工具的进一步开发应侧重于用于提出区域性建议，以及使用多年的数据来提高该工具提出针对特定地点的可靠建议的能力。©2020野生动物协会。