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Ecological monitoring is a key part of adaptive management and successful restoration. Not everything within an ecosystem can be monitored so it is important to select indicators that are representative of the system, integrate system responses, show clear responses to system change, can be effectively and efficiently monitored, and are easily communicated. Roseate Spoonbills are one of the indicators that meet these criteria within the Everglades ecosystem. Monitoring of Roseate Spoonbills in Florida Bay over the past 70 years has shown that this species responds to changes in hydrology and corresponding changes in prey abundance and availability. This indicator uses nesting location, nest numbers and nesting success in response to food abundance and availability. In turn, prey abundance is a function of hydrological conditions including depth, and salinity. These relationships have been well documented such that spoonbills responses can be directly related to changes in hydrology and salinity.The spoonbill indicator uses performance measures that have been shown to be both effective and efficient in tracking trends. They are: nesting success, nest number, locations of nests, and prey fish community composition. Targets for these performance measures we established based on previous findings. The performance measures are then reported as suitability indices identified as stoplight colors with green indicating that targets have been met, yellow indicating that conditions are below the target but within a suitable range of it and red indicating the measure is performing poorly in relation to the target.

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