MONTEREY AUDUBON PARTNERS WITH CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS FOR THE SNOWY PLOVER GUARDIAN PROGRAM
The Monterey Audubon Society works in partnership with California State Parks, the primary land manager for Snowy Plover habitat in Monterey Bay, through the Snowy Plover Guardian Program. This program focuses on education and outreach by trained State Park volunteers to inform the public about the rules and regulations in place at the sandy beach parks where Snowy Plovers nest and roost. The efforts of these volunteers help support Point Blue Conservation Science’s Snowy Plover researchers, State Park’s law enforcement, and the natural resources staff persons who are all trying to maintain the delicate sandy shore habitat and monitor the federally threatened Western Snowy Plovers.
That's a wrap! The 2024 Snowy Plover breeding season is complete. But you can still help plovers throughout the winter!
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Snowy Plover Guardians are invited to attend the end-of-season celebration and also tune in to the winter season refresher course, hosted online. See more information below.
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Snowy Plover Guardian End-of-Season Celebration/Plover Party - Wednesday, October 9th, 6:00 - 8:00 pm at the Asilomar Conference Grounds. RSVP to Amanda.
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Virtual Winter Season refresher, covering winter volunteering opportunities and the slight change in messaging during the non-breeding months. - Wednesday, October 23rd, 6:00 - 7:00 pm online HERE
You may view previous recordings of training sessions and other interesting plover and coastal dune trainings on our YouTube channel.
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If you are interested in becoming a Snowy Plover Guardian in Monterey Bay, get in touch with us! We can always use more plover lovers on the beach. Esther.Haile@parks.ca.gov
Where can I take my dog in Monterey Bay?
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DEFENDING MONTEREY BAY’S SNOWY PLOVERS
MAS President, Blake Matheson (c. 2017)
A Snowy Plover near the Salinas River mouth (c) B. Matheson
From Monterey Harbor north to Watsonville and beyond, a long crescent of high dunes defines the Monterey Bay’s shore. And no single species better captures both the subtle beauty and fragility of this dune ecosystem than the Western Snowy Plover. “Snowies” can’t nest on the Rocky Shore. They can’t nest in grasslands, or agricultural fields. They require sand, invertebrates to eat, and to be left more-or-less alone from the intrusions of Homo sapiens.
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While Snowy Plovers were once more widespread in Monterey Bay, today they find the conditions they need to nest and survive from roughly Sand City, north to the mouth of the Pajaro River. Here the dunescape is broad enough, unleashed dogs are few enough, and the foot traffic of beach-goers and surf-casters is light enough, that Snowy Plovers can still forage and breed, most seasons. Significant stretches of the coast are nominally protected as California State Parklands. But a scattering of privately owned footholds in the dunes present a constant risk of development, threatening to extirpate the birds from segments of the shoreline piecemeal.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service first declared the Snowy Plover threatened with extinction in 1973. Pursuant to the Endangered Species Act, that designation has brought the birds a panoply of legal protections. In 2012, after three decades of careful research, and scant improvement in the birds’ prospects, biologists identified and named all the habitat on the West Coast that was critical to the birds survival and recovery. The sandy shore of southern Monterey Bay was singled out as one such segment of crucial breeding territory and catalogued as California Critical Habitat “Zone 22.” Critical Habitat designations are more than just academic inventories. The Endangered Species Act prohibits individuals or entities from killing or harming endangered species, and destroying designated critical habitat. The impressive letter of the Law, however, can sometimes present an unfortunate contrast to its adherence and enforcement.
The sandy dunes and beach of Monterey Bay, from Sand City to the Pajaro River Mouth are a critical breeding ground for Snowy Plovers
Western Snowy Plover Critical Habitat Unit CA-22
Jennifer Pena’s Plover Awareness Sign was one among several dozen installed on the southern shore of Monterey Bay.
Two large, privately held ocean-front parcels within Unit-22 fall within the municipal limits of the small commercial-industrial enclave of Sand City, near Seaside. The City and the parcel owners have long sought (and in some cases received) permissions to develop their ocean-front parcels into lucrative hotel-resort complexes. Further north, west of Marina, a decades-old mine extracts hundreds of thousands of tons of sand from the shore of Monterey’s National Marine Sanctuary, every year, causing widespread erosion of Plover habitat. On the southern edge of Zone 22, near Monterey State Beach, crowds of beach-goers and dogs, unleashed in violation of State Park regulations, swarm the beach, making it impossible for Snowy Plovers to find shelter or rest.
Monterey Audubon and its allies in the local conservation community have spent more than three decades endeavoring to prevent further deterioration of the Plovers’ habitat and raise public awareness of the birds’ presence. In the 1990s, Monterey Audubon volunteers were among the first wave of docents on the California coast to monitor snowy nesting success. In 2012, we partnered with State Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Seaside to make and install protective signage around the most heavily trafficked portions of the Plovers’ southern breeding range near Seaside. And, as an out-of-town developer grew closer to gaining the approvals necessary to build a 300 unit resort complex in the middle of plover nesting grounds, Monterey Audubon helped fund efforts to try and deter the project in on legal grounds and document the continuing use of the the site by the birds.
How well Monterey Bay’s Snowy Plovers will fare in coming decades remains to be seen. A rising sea, eroding shore, and a growing human population, hungry for beach access and real estate, present daunting challenges for this inconspicuous, fragile and beautiful species. But, with your support Monterey Audubon will continue to fight to grant the birds as much time and space as can be won.