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Teresa Bertossi
Come Over, Come Over, Piping Plover
The Great Lakes population of piping plovers is nearly halfway to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's recovery goal of 150 breeding pairs. The number of pairs dropped to just 17 in 1986, when the U.S. added the population to the endangered species list.
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Ted Gostomski
Come Over, Come Over, Piping Plover
Plover chicks are able to walk and feed themselves within hours of hatching.
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Teresa Bertossi
Come Over, Come Over, Piping Plover
A group of volunteers band plover chicks at Grand Marais, Michigan.
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Teresa Bertossi
Come Over, Come Over, Piping Plover
Volunteers release banded plover chicks at Grand Marais, Michigan.
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Teresa Bertossi
Come Over, Come Over, Piping Plover
Volunteers watch the beach for piping plovers in Grand Marais, Michigan.
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National Park Service
Come Over, Come Over, Piping Plover
Piping plovers nest on sparsely vegetated sandy beaches, where their small eggs are difficult to spot.
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Teresa Bertossi
Come Over, Come Over, Piping Plover
Vince Cavalieri, the Great Lakes piping plover recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says the population may not meet the recovery goal for another 10 years. But, he adds, the future looks bright.
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Teresa Bertossi
Come Over, Come Over, Piping Plover
Piping plovers nest on sparsely vegetated beaches and rely on camouflage to survive.
The brightly whistled “peep-lo” of the piping plover was once as much a part of Lake Superior’s summer soundscape as the crash of waves on the shore. By the mid-1980s, though, the small shorebirds and their melodic chimes had all but disappeared.
Historically, hundreds of breeding pairs of piping plovers made nests beside the five Great Lakes, but those numbers plummeted after decades of habitat loss and human disturbance. Canada added the Great Lakes population of piping plovers to its endangered species list in 1985; the United States followed suit in ‘86, when just 17 breeding pairs were counted on U.S. shores.
Now, nearly 30 years later, the outlook is much less bleak. In fact, when Lake Superior Magazine polled various organizations about their biggest recent environmental successes, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore listed piping plovers as a top pick.
The birds now regularly nest on that Wisconsin shore after long being found only in remote parts of Michigan. Last summer, five adult pairs reared 15 chicks within the lakeshore’s boundaries.
“I’ve been here 11 years,” says Peggy Burkman, a park biologist, “and that is the most adult plovers that we’ve had in that time.”
Lake Superior contributes mightily to the overall population of the plovers – counting more than a quarter of the 66 breeding pairs on all the Great Lakes.
All U.S. and Canadian piping plover populations winter together on the Gulf and southern Atlantic coasts, but come spring, they split into three groups for migration. One follows the Atlantic coast north, another cuts across the U.S. heartland to the Great Plains and the third spends summer on remote Great Lakes beaches. Each population has struggled, but none so much as Great Lakes plovers.
Piping plovers require very particular conditions for their nests, which are merely shallow scrapes in the sand. The sandy-colored shorebirds depend on camouflage for survival and need a wide, sparsely vegetated beach dotted with small stones and driftwood to hide themselves and their speckled eggs from predators. Those conditions, once plentiful around the Great Lakes, have grown scarce as developments and invasive plants gobbled up shoreline and as more visitors flocked to the beaches.
The modest return of the piping plovers comes thanks to the work of federal, state and tribal agencies and monitoring groups to rebuild those necessary conditions.
Behind collaborative efforts by the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. National Park Service and other agencies, piping plovers have successfully nested on the Apostles’ Long Island since 1998, Peggy says. “We’re building up a great number of chicks that have been hatched here and then return to breed.”
Peggy says that the population growth in Wisconsin is a spillover from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, both on the south shore of Lake Superior and the north shore of Lake Michigan.
Researchers band each plover chick they encounter, and most of the Apostles’ birds still come from Michigan. As those beaches fill up, the piping plovers are emigrating west to shores from which they were driven decades ago.
In Michigan, monitors along Lake Superior’s “shipwreck coast” between Grand Marais and Whitefish Point counted 12 breeding pairs and 24 chicks fledged in 2013, both record totals. The addition of 19 acres to the Whitefish Point unit of Seney National Wildlife Refuge in April protected another 1,000 feet of shoreline there, too.
Funded by a grant from the binational Sustain Our Great Lakes organization, students and faculty from Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and from Algoma University in Sault, Ontario, monitor sites throughout the summer.
“In 2008 we had students on the ground at one site, and we just grew from there,” says LSSU Associate Professor Jason Garvon, who works on the project with his wife, Shannon Rowell-Garvon, an Algoma professor. “For the 2014-15 year, we’ll be monitoring all the sites in the U.P.”
The Garvons and their students also place what are called exclosures over the nests to keep predators out, but let the plovers come and go.
In all, dozens of volunteers on the Big Lake’s shores spend thousands of hours each year watching over plovers, clearing beaches of invasive plants and coordinating outreach efforts.
Even with the successes, plenty of work remains. In recent years, beach monitors have spotted piping plovers on beaches in the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior, too, but no nests. The birds haven’t returned to the Ontario shores of Lake Superior, either, though historically they never did in great numbers.
The St. Louis River Alliance, which monitors piping plovers and restores habitat on Minnesota Point and Wisconsin Point, says many beachgoers simply don’t know about the plovers’ struggles and unknowingly spook the birds.
“We’ve got a pretty big job here because the area is heavily trafficked,” says Kris Eilers, project coordinator for the alliance. To help, volunteers watch over prime nesting habitat on the points and talk to visitors about the birds, about leashing their dogs and about picking up garbage, which attracts predatory birds like gulls. Most folks are immediately receptive, monitoring groups say.
“Our hope is that anybody running into one of our monitors will ask them about the plovers, to have people feel welcome that they can talk to our monitors,” Jason says of the Michigan efforts. “We want to recognize that there’s multiple uses, that we want to work together. Rather than go out and be more confrontational, we say, ‘Here’s what’s going on here,’ and it seems to work.”
Piping plovers will remain endangered for the foreseeable future, says Vince Cavalieri, the Great Lakes piping plover recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Our recovery goal is to get the Great Lakes population to 150 breeding pairs. We’re currently at about 70. It’s probably going to take 10-plus years.”
Once the population hits 150, and other goals related to breeding and habitat restoration are met, that level would have to be sustained for five years before the endangered label can be removed from the species.
Still, 2013 was one of the best years in recent memory for piping plovers on Lake Superior.
“It’s just kind of snowballing upwards,” Vince says. The species’ future – and the Big Lake soundscape – has brightened once again.
Know Your Plover
Average Size: 6-7 in. long
Average Weight: 1-2 oz.
Life Cycle: Great Lakes’ piping plovers winter along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts and migrate north to breed in late April. By late May, most pairs have nested. Females lay 3-4 eggs. They may renest if the nest is destroyed.
Incubation: Duties shared by female and male for 25-31 days; eggs hatch late May to late July. The female often leaves her brood after a week or two, while the male stays. After 21-30 days, the chicks fledge. By late August, most plovers have migrated south.
Hear piping plover calls at www.birds.audubon.org/birds/piping-plover
Be a Plover Monitor
In Minnesota and Wisconsin, contact the St. Louis River Alliance.
In Michigan, contact the U.S. Fish & Wildlife East Lansing Ecological Services Field Office.
