Ruth Boettcher
Ruth has served as the VA Dept. of Wildlife Resources’ coastal nongame biologist since 2001. She is based on the Eastern Shore of VA and her area of responsibility includes the lower Delmarva Peninsula and adjacent seaward marshes and barrier islands as well the waters, shorelines, islands and major tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. Her work focuses primarily on all aspects of nongame waterbird (i.e., shorebirds, seabirds and long-legged wading birds) conservation, research, monitoring and management. Ruth became involved with the AKN by way of the Atlantic Flyway Council which provided funds under three separate contracts to: (1) create a colonial waterbird (CWB) extension in which to enter, store and analyze historical, recent and future CWB data; (2) upload all records in the USGS CWB database into the CWB extension; (3) develop analytical and visualization tools for the extension; and (4) develop and offer training tools and webinars for data users and contributors.