Monitoring Great Lakes Piping Plovers

Great Lakes Piping Plovers face are endangered throughout the Great Lakes region and face a variety of threats that put their survival at risk. In 2016, following partner-led restoration of sandy habitat, a pair of Great Lakes Piping Plovers nested in Cat Island in lower Green Bay, marking the first time the species had successfully bred anywhere on Green Bay in 75 years and the first time the species had ever been known to breed in Brown County.

Audubon Great Lakes coordinates monitoring at Cat Island, where a team of volunteers, staff, and partner staff monitor daily from early April through early August. Partners include U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Northeast Wisconsin (NEW) Audubon. This work is in coordination with the Cat Island Restoration Project, an ongoing habitat restoration project including Audubon Great Lakes and over 10 partners that are working together to reconstruct three islands in lower Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Bird monitors for Great Lakes Piping Plovers are trained volunteers and staff who protect nesting sites by educating the public, observing plover behavior, and safeguarding nests from predators and human disturbance. They work to ensure the survival of the endangered shorebirds by monitoring their nesting and chick-rearing activities, which provides data for conservation efforts like captive-rearing and banding. Monitoring provides important data on Piping Plover movements and nesting success including arrival, territory forming, mating, egg-laying, nest tending, fledging and departure.

Piping Plovers rely on relatively undisturbed sandy beaches for nesting and are at risk from habitat loss, predation by animals, and a changing climate. In addition to routine monitoring, volunteer monitors help track interactions of plovers with encroaching Herring Gulls to help form a response plan.

The long-term recovery goal for the Great Lakes population is to sustain at least 150 nesting pairs for five consecutive years, with 50 of those pairs outside of Michigan.

The continued success of the Great Lakes Piping Plover recovery effort depends on an extraordinary partnership that includes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, state DNRs, Great Lakes Tribes, Detroit Zoo, Audubon, Birds Canada, and Lake Superior State University, among many others. 

Monitoring to help protect this endangered species are thanks to partners XX and funding from XX. 

If you’d like to do more to contribute to Piping Plover conservation, you can learn more about coastal stewardship and take the pledge to protect Great Lakes Piping Plovers by following the links below: 

• Learn more about coastal stewardship and read Audubon Great Lakes’ Coastal Stewardship Toolkit here.

• Take the pledge to protect Great Lakes Piping Plovers! 

• If you see a Piping Plover, eBird your sighting and/or report it to Tom Prestby at thomas.prestby@audubon.org or the Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery team at glpipldata@gmail.com