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Conservation of migratory birds requires understanding the distribution of and potential threats to their migratory habitats. However, although migratory birds are protected under international treaties, few maps have been available to represent migration at a landscape scale useful to target conservation efforts or inform the siting of wind energy developments that may affect migratory birds. To fill this gap, we developed models that predict where four groups of birds concentrate or stopover during their migration through the state of Wyoming, USA: raptors, wetland, riparian and sparse grassland birds. The models were based on existing literature and expert knowledge concerning bird migration behavior and ecology and validated using expert ratings and known occurrences. There was significant agreement between migratory occurrence data and migration models for all groups except raptors, and all models ranked well with experts. We measured the overlap between the migration concentration models and a predictive model of wind energy development to assess the potential exposure of migratory birds to wind development and illustrate the utility of migratory concentration models for landscape-scale planning. Wind development potential is high across 15% of Wyoming, and 73% of this high potential area intersects important migration concentration areas. From 5.2% to 18.8% of each group’s important migration areas was represented within this high wind potential area, with the highest exposures for sparse grassland birds and the lowest for riparian birds. Our approach could be replicated elsewhere to fill critical data gaps and better inform conservation priorities and landscape-scale planning for migratory birds.

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Surveying for rare animals can be difficult but using models to predict suitable habitat can guide sampling efforts. We used models to predict suitable habitat for the Narrow-footed Hygrotus Diving Beetle Hygrotus diversipes (diving beetle hereafter), a dytiscid beetle that is known from 10 streams in central Wyoming. The diving beetle was a category-2 Candidate species for listing as Threatened or Endangered in the Endangered Species Act between 1989 and 1996, and was petitioned for listing in 2007, 2008, and 2013. Suitable habitat for the diving beetle was predicted using Maximum Entropy and Random Forest models in Wyoming. Both models predicted that the diving beetle was more likely to occur in intermittent streams with a gentle gradient, shallow water table, variable precipitation pattern, and high soil electrical conductivity, and in the warmest areas of Wyoming. We conducted surveys for the diving beetle at sites where the species had previously been found, and in new areas that were predicted suitable by our models to evaluate whether it is more widely distributed than indicated by previous estimates. We sampled beetles using dip nets and bottle-traps, and assessed water quality at each site. We collected the diving beetle at three sites in central Wyoming between 2010 and 2012 in small, alkaline, intermittent streams with disconnected pools. The aquatic habitat of the diving beetle is dynamic and our results suggest that annual precipitation patterns have a strong influence on the biogeography of this habitat. Our results also suggest that maintaining the hydrologic integrity of prairie streams in Wyoming is vital to the conservation of the diving beetle.