Renewed Hope for Piping Plover

Faced with Lawsuit, Federal Government Agrees to Revise Recovery Strategy for Endangered Shorebird

Nature Canada is applauding a move by the federal government to settle an outstanding court case that may lead to enhanced protection for Canada’s endangered species.

A coalition of leading conservation groups sued the federal government over failure to identify critical habitat in the recovery strategy of an endangered shore bird, the Piping Plover. Canada’s Species at Risk Act cannot protect important habitat unless it is identified in recovery plans. However no habitat is identified in a majority of the plans currently released.

In a surprise move, government lawyers alerted conservation groups to a ministerial about-face, advising that the government would immediately pull the current Plover recovery strategy and reintroduce it with critical habitat identified. As well, the government will address a backlog on recovery planning for over 50 endangered species.

“For naturalists, the court case was a last resort that we saw as a choice between doing nothing and risking extinction of not just the Plovers, but also Canada’s endangered species protection law,” said Julie Gelfand, President of Nature Canada. “We hope this move by the minister signals the possibility that both can be saved. ”

The Plover, like 84 per cent of Canada’s at-risk species, is threatened with extinction because of loss of habitat. It is also one of Canada’s most studied birds with known habitat in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. So when the federal government refused to identify critical habitat for the Plover, Sierra Legal launched the court case alleging that the federal government was breaking the law.

“It continually amazes us how much time we invest in simply getting Canada to abide by its own laws,” said Sierra Legal lawyer Devon Page. “But this is a victory and we’ll take it.”

Tiny Bird, Big Threats
Animals, human activity, and development all spell trouble for this endangered shorebird. Unfortunately, the small shorebirds breed along coastal beaches of Atlantic Canada, and along lake shorelines in the prairies.

Unfortunately, piping plover breeding habitat often overlaps with popular areas for human recreation and is often destroyed by activities such as sunbathing, boating, and ATVs, as well as cottage and resort development.

While gulls, crows, raccoons, foxes, and skunks are known to eat nests full of eggs or chicks, falcons may prey on the adult birds. Too often these predators are lured to the breeding areas by garbage left on the beaches.

In the prairies, some plover habitat is threatened by uses like cattle grazing. Cattle use the lakes where plovers need to nest as water holes, and the birds may be trampled, or the habitat can be ruined.

There are two piping plover subspecies in Canada - the melodus subspecies who live in Atlantic Canada, and the circumcinctus subspecies who live in the prairies, Manitoba, and around the Great Lakes. Both are classified as endangered. The Atlantic population consists of about 450 to 500 individuals. The prairie population has about 2000.

Dedicated volunteers are leading the way to protect and conserve the piping plover in two main areas: public outreach concerning the protection of nesting habitat, and predator protection. Outreach work includes a program of volunteer coastal guardians who patrol beaches in the summer and use symbolic fencing to make sure that beach goers are aware that they are sharing the beach with an endangered bird. They hand out educational materials and monitor the breeding success of the birds. In order to protect the plover nests, small exclosures are being placed over top of nests that allow the plover parents to get in and out, but protects the eggs from larger predators.