BLACKSBURG, Va., Aug. 27 -- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University issued the following news release:
Research at a glance
When Professor Ashley Dayer was walking on the beach with her 8-year-old son recently, he stopped her before she got too close to a group of shorebirds.
"Momma, stop. We have to walk around the shorebirds," he told her.
Dayer smiled. That moment was the perfect example of the human behavior change she and conservation partners have spent more than a decade trying to encourage along beaches used by both people and imperiled shorebirds.
Now, new research suggests those seemingly simple choices by beachgoers could be making a difference for the birds themselves. The team's approach, known as community-bas...