The reddish egret (Egretta rufescens) is the rarest heron in North America and much remains to be learned about in the ecology of the species. The reddish egret is a foraging habitat specialist and relies on shallow coastal ecosystems. There is a paucity of information on foraging habitat requirements and the availability of foraging habitat throughout the annual cycle. Characteristics of foraging habitat at locations within the Laguna Madre, Texas where reddish egrets were observed foraging were measured. These characteristics were used to conduct a geospatial analysis that estimated the spatial and temporal distributions of foraging habitat in the Laguna Madre across 120 weeks from 2012 to 2014. Reddish egrets (n = 372) foraged in an average water depth of 10.1 ± 0.68 cm and in areas with average seagrass cover of 12.3 ± 2.74%. Approximately, 75 000 ha of foraging habitat were delineated to be available in the Laguna Madre across the study period; of this, 4 003 ha were available ≥ 50% of the time. The amount of available foraging habitat was relatively high during the spring and summer, and decreased by ~50% during winter. This model-based approach can be used throughout the species' range to examine foraging habitat availability which is a current conservation need according to the Reddish Egret Conservation Action Plan.

waterfowl data, survey teams, and analysts. The authors thank the Priority Landscapes Committee for their dedication to regular meetings, discussions, and edits of multiple interim progress documents. We also thank M. Al-Saffar of U.

Resource allocation for land acquisition is a common multiobjective problem that involves complex trade‐offs. The National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently uses the Targeted Resource Acquisition Comparison Tool (TRACT) to allocate funds from the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund (MBCF; established through the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Act of 1934) for land acquisition based on cost–benefit analysis, regional priority rankings of candidate land parcels available for acquisition, and the overall biological contribution to duck population objectives. However, current policy encourages decision makers to consider societal and economic benefits of lands acquired, in addition to their biological benefits to waterfowl. These decisions about portfolio elements (i.e., individual land parcels) require an analysis of the difficult trade‐offs among multiple objectives. In the last decade the application of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods has been instrumental in aiding decision makers with complex multiobjective decisions. In this study, we present an alternative approach to developing land‐acquisition portfolios using MCDA and modern portfolio theory (MPT). We describe the development of a portfolio decision analysis tool using constrained optimization for land‐acquisition decisions by the NWRS. We outline the decision framework, describe development of the prototype tool in Microsoft Excel, and test the results of the tool using land parcels submitted as candidates for MBCF funding in 2019. Our results indicate that the constrained optimization outperformed the traditional TRACT method and ad hoc portfolios developed using current NWRS criteria.

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