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Community Corner

Protecting the Shore's Piping Plover

The protected species nests along Sandy Hook Bay

Another Memorial Day weekend has come and gone. But the embattled Piping Plover is still around, and in fact hard at work trying to raise a family in one of the most urban coastlines in the world — New York Harbor.

Some nests were located on sand dunes at the tip of Breezy Point, a small coastal landscape located on the western end of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, New York City.

Other nests were found along the ocean side of Sandy Hook, a peninsula that marks the southern entrance of Lower New York Bay, south of New York City. Both sites are managed by the National Park Service as Gateway National Recreation Area.

The dry sandy areas of the back-beach are preferred nesting habitat for the Piping Plover, a small, handsome migratory shorebird, only about seven inches long. The tiny bird calls New York Harbor home during the spring and summer when the intrinsic desire to nest and raise a family is intense.

Every nest and every egg is important for the recovery of the Piping Plover. Since 1985, the bird has been listed as a federally threatened species. The Piping Plover is listed as a state endangered species In both New Jersey and New York.

There are only about 7,000 individual Piping Plovers in the United States according to US Fish and Wildlife. Nearly all the birds are seen during the nesting season at either inland beaches along the Great Lakes, beside rivers and wetlands in the northern Great Plains, or at sandy beaches alongside the Atlantic coast from Maine to North Carolina.

One of the most harassed populations are the birds that call New York Harbor home during the spring and summer. It's a busy and bustling place with lots of people, lots of predators, and lots of pollution. A stressful life for a little pale shorebird with orange legs.  

Piping plovers arrive to New York Harbor sometime in March from their winter coastal home down south. The tiny birds will have traveled thousands of miles to reach the shores of New York Harbor. Not all of them will survive a winged migration that at times abounds with strong winds, intense storms, and meager coastal habitat to forage for food.

Once the plovers arrive to New York Harbor, their  success at raising a family depends on whether they'll will be able to run a gauntlet of prowling predators from hungry raccoons and foxes, to bullying gulls and crows, to sneaky Norway rats and feral cats. Garbage left on beaches is also trouble, as it attracts predators, including foxes, skunks, raccoons, crows, and gulls.

Large gulls and crows can terrorize breeding pairs of Piping Plovers, causing them to abandon their nests. Although plovers may nest again if their eggs are destroyed, young raised later in the season often don't survive as well as those raised in May and June.

Unfortunately, people are a big problem too. Sometimes there are reports of a person damaging a nest. Last year, federal park police were trying to track down someone who stole eggs from two Piping Plover nests at Breezy Point during the early morning hours on July 4.

The eggs may have been stolen by a collector. At Sandy Hook in 2009,  park police were trying to find someone who removed two incubating Piping Plover eggs from a nest and damaged fencing that protected plovers and other shorebird nests for Least Terns and Black Skimmers.

It's not easy being a Piping Plover. The small bird was nearly driven to extinction around the turn of the century by extensive hunting for meat and sport. The bird made a small recovery in the 1940s due to federal protection by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but then declined once again due to coastal development and human recreation following World War II.

Today, nonstop human pressures from coastal development, recreational activities, and disturbance by off-road vehicles have reduced breeding habitat for Piping Plovers. In addition, increasing sea level rise and escalating intense storm events from global warming has degraded what little sandy beach habitat remains.  

Despite the challenges, the desire by many people to keep the petite Piping Plover going on is robust. Efforts by volunteers and government officials in New York and New Jersey to provide plovers with a safe haven has been somewhat successful.

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For example, in 2011 at Sandy Hook, there were 49 nesting pairs of Piping Plovers, four more pairs than in 2010. The pairs laid a total of 225 eggs, an increase from the 175 eggs laid in 2010. Still, only 152 eggs hatched and only 50 percent of the hatchlings actually survived. 

In the end, a sustainable population of Piping Plover will exist in New York Harbor and other coastal beaches only when people decide they want to share a beach with endangered and threatened shorebirds.

It's all about respecting boundaries.  Conservation, research, education and outreach can help, but it will always be up to the individual beachgoer or coastal resident to respect what little wild nature exists in the New York metropolitan region. 

The birds represent an important part of the ecology and the natural history of this area. It would be shame to see them vanish because we couldn't get along with a tiny Piping Plover.

For more information, pictures and year-round sightings of wildlife in or near Sandy Hook Bay, please check out my blog entitled, Nature on the Edge of New York City at http://www.natureontheedgenyc.com

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