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Piping Plover, Back from the Brink
At the turn of the century feather, egg, and sport hunters pushed the piping plover, a 6-inch shorebird with gray and white markings, to the verge of extinction. After hunting was banned in 1918, the bird's population grew, peaking in the 1940s. Then came another decline thanks largely to human disturbance of its vulnerable breeding habitat on open beaches. In 1986, when the Atlantic Coast population was estimated to have dropped to 790 pairs, the piping plover was placed on the Federal Endangered Species List.
But today, thanks to major efforts by government agencies and citizen groups to place fences around nesting sites and to increase public awareness about the threats the piping plover faces, the bird's Atlantic coastal population (the nation's largest) is up to 1195 pairs. Further increases have been targeted.
According to Jody Jones, the Maine Audubon Society's piping plover specialist, since the early 1980s the number of nesting pairs has jumped from perhaps10 on six Maine beaches to 47 on eighteen beaches between Wells and Georgetown. ``Maine has incredible productivity compared to other states," she says, thanks to intensive management through signs and protective fencing around nests, increased public awareness through information that goes to property owners in Essential Habitat Designated Areas, and laws that protect dunes from being developed.
Nearly 98% of Maine landowners in Essential Habitat Designated Areas participate in plover related activities, Jones continues. Some towns in Maine are even considering hiring a plover monitor to walk beside garbage trucks while they drive on the beach. Jones says that Maine could easily have another 20 pairs because there is still more habitat for the birds to move into. New England's piping plovers are faring well overall, Jones adds, citing relatively low predation of chicks and tight management practices as reasons.
Bad storms can destroy the bird's nesting habitat, says Susi von Oettingen, endangered species biologist at the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Piping plovers in mid-Atlantic and southeastern states are especially vulnerable to a wide range of predators including raccoons, skunks, cats, dogs, foxes, owls, snakes, and gulls. Still, authorities now have enough confidence in the situation to have established goals for the species' further population growth along the Atlantic coast. Long term targets are 400 pairs in Atlantic Canada, 625 in New England, 575 in New York and New Jersey, and 400 in the southern states.
For now anyway, it appears that the hard work of government officials, scientists, environmentalists, and volunteers is paying off for a bird that once seemed doomed. |
