This species has an extremely large range and large population size. Despite the fact that the population is suspected to have declined recently, the decline is not believed to be sufficiently rapid to approach threatened thresholds. The impact of hunting at key stopover sites during southbound migration may be driving slow declines, possibly in combination with loss of optimal non-breeding and northbound migration habitat, and the potential future impact of climate change on breeding habitat should be assessed though large-scale repeated population monitoring. The species is evaluated as Least Concern.

The species breeds in the low arctic and subarctic tundra in northern Canada and Alaska (United States of America) (Johnson et al. 2021). It undertakes a long-distance migration to non-breeding areas in grassland and wetlands in interior South America, especially in northern Argentina, but also in Uruguay and southernmost coastal Brazil, and at high-elevation in Bolivia and Peru (Fink et al. 2023). Many also winter patchily along the Pacific coast from Chile to northern Peru and northern Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela and in small numbers in the Caribbean (Johnson et al. 2021, Fink et al. 2023). During spring passage most pass through the centre of the USA from Louisiana and Texas to North Dakota and Saskatchwan, while the majority undertake an initial long-distance post-breeding migration hop direct from north-east Canada to the Caribbean over the Atlantic. Consequently Caribbean islands are of considerable importance during the southbound migration. It has been widely recorded as a vagrant (Johnson et al. 2021, Fink et al. 2023).

The global population has been estimated at 6 million birds (Bart et al. in prep.), here placed in a band of 1,000,000-6,000,000 mature individuals. This value is based on an extrapolation from the final estimate from the Program for Regional and International Shorebird Monitoring (PRISM) surveys on the breeding grounds (Bart and Smith 2012, Smith et al. in prep.). The final estimate for Arctic Canada was 3,310,745 individuals (Smith et al. in prep.), with an additional c. 300,000 individuals for surveyed parts of northern Alaska (Andres et al. 2012). This surveyed area comprises roughly 60% of the breeding range, hence the final extrapolated estimate of 6 million birds (Bart et al. in prep.). These surveys target breeding pairs in suitable breeding habitat, hence the values derived are considered to relate to mature individuals. It has been noted that extrapolations based on habitat association may be misleading for this species as what appears suitable habitat may contain no birds (Johnson et al. 2021). Hence the extrapolated value here is also treated as a maximum.
Previously the population was estimated to number only c.500,000 individuals (Andres et al. 2012), but this was a value based on only the initial surveys and it was stated that this estimate would increase as the PRISM surveys were completed (Smith et al. in prep). Earlier the suggestion that the population could be 1.0 to 2.5 million pairs (Byrkjedal and Thompson 1998) was considered highly unlikely (Clay et al. 2010). Numbers in non-breeding areas suggest a large proportion of this very large breeding population are unaccounted for by surveys to date. Densities in the grazed pampas in Argentina are reported at 10+ birds per square kilometre (Johnson et al. 2021), which if applied to the whole area of suitable habitat would suggest more than a million individuals are present in this region. A recent approach generating population estimates using Bayesian models on simultaneous large-scale samples along the Atlantic coast between Brazil and Argentina reported a total of 36,038 (95% CI 14,365 to 57,653) individuals (Faria et al. in press), but these surveys did not cover non-coastal sites where most of this species’ population occurs. Large numbers are now thought to winter further north following deforestation increasing the area of suitable habitat, at least in Brazil (Sick 1997), and in native wet pastures in the Brazilian Pantanal it is one of the most numerous Nearctic migrants (A.P. Nunes in litt. 2024).

Demographic studies indicate survival is the key determinant of population trend for the species (Weiser et al. 2020).  Loss of non-breeding and stopover habitat due to conversion of grasslands to agricultural use that is less favourable to the species is suspected to be a major cause of increased mortality, and direct mortality through market hunting at moderately high levels in parts of the Caribbean (AFSI 2020) may be sufficient to cause some declines. Shifting and alteration of habitat due to climate change is also suspected to be affecting reproductive success but is not considered to be causing elevated mortality rates, hence other drivers are likely responsible for any ongoing population reduction.

Reports of considerable hunting take in the Caribbean and parts of the northern South American coast at migration sites may represent a severe threat. An estimated Potential Biological Removal has been set at 17,500 (Watts et al. 2015). Current levels of offtake are not systematically monitored but are high on at least some islands, with 600-1,800 taken annually from Barbados (Watts et al. 2015). When large numbers are grounded on certain islands by tropical storms harvest may exceed sustainable offtake levels: 2,000 were reported killed in a single field in Guadaloupe following the passage of Tropical Storm Maria in 2011 (Watts et al. 2015). However harvest effort and numbers taken appear to be reducing on several Caribbean islands (AFSI 2020).