Wildlife Biologist Stephanie Koch was the guest speaker at the Cape Cod Bird Club's final meeting of the fiscal year on 12 May, 2008. The 75 member audience contained mostly birders. Stephanie's presentation provided the audience an overview of the Service and National Wildlife Refuge System and then focused primarily on management and conservation at Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge. The audience learned about the diversity and abundance of nesting and migrating birds and the importance of the refuge to these species in Massachusetts. They also learned about other species of interest, big and small, from grey seals to Federally-listed northeastern beach tiger beetles. Much of the presentation focused on recent research conducted with the University of Rhode Island on migrating shorebirds and potential impacts of different types of public use. Stephanie discussed the 3 main objectives of the research: 1) quantify the spatial and temporal distribution and abundance of shorebirds using the refuge throughout the migration period and identify influential natural parameters; 2) assess the spatial distribution, abundance, and seasonality of potential anthropogenic disturbances and; 3) quantify shorebird response to anthropogenic disturbances. Stephanie explained the main methodology that was used to collect some of the data and presented some preliminary results. Preliminary findings sparked a great discussion among audience members who were very interested in the management implications. The importance of understanding the variability in spatial and temporal distributions of different shorebird species and age cohorts (and age) in conjunction with different types of public use was discussed.