Protecting the Piping Plover

Pity the Piping Plover: in May or June, just as the stocky little shorebird scrapes a shallow whisper of a nest on the shoreline of southern Lake Winnipeg, the beach is overrun by human holidayers.

Meek and mild by nature, the delicate Plovers are no match for the sun worshippers. If repeatedly frightened and disturbed, they may abandon their tiny eggs or desert their fragile young, sending their already endangered numbers further into species decline.

Bashful Beach Birds: The Piping Plover is a North American species, restricted to the Northern Plains, Great Lakes and the Atlantic Coast. With their risky habitat preference for bare, open stretches of sand or gravel shoreline, Piping Plovers rely on isolation and camouflage to protect them from predators. During breeding season, only their orange legs and thin black breast bands keep them from blending completely into the natural beach tones of their nesting grounds. The pebbly appearance of their eggs provides a further measure of protection.

Female Piping Plovers lay an average of 4 eggs, one every other day. Both adults take turns incubating the eggs, which hatch within 28 days. If the young survive humans, coyotes, crows, motorized vehicles, grazing livestock and high water levels, they are able to fly by mid-summer, and to migrate to wintering grounds in the southern U.S. and Mexico.

Plummeting Population: Plovers have been the subject of conservation concern since the early 1900's, when they were numerous enough to be hunted for game. An American migratory bird designation in 1918 halted their initial decline, but recreational developments along North American beaches have sent population numbers plummeting again, to a total of fewer than 6,000 adults. Since 1985, the species has been classified as endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). It is protected by the federal Migratory Bird Convention Act, and is the focus of a national Prairie Piping Plover Recovery Program.

Plover Awareness: In the past 2 decades in Manitoba, Plover numbers have fluctuated between 20 and 100 pairs. On popular southern Lake Winnipeg beaches such as Grand and Beaconia, public education programs have alerted beach-goers to the fragility of the birds and their nests. As part of the Grand Beach Provincial Park Management Plan, Plover nesting areas are fenced, and much further north, near the community of Grand Rapids, the Walter Cook Special Conservation Area designates one half of Long Point's Gull Bay Spit as a protected Piping Plover breeding ground.