The plight of the piping plover is an indicator of an entire ecosystem in very serious trouble. Since the listing of the piping plover in 1986, the roseate tern (Sterna dougallii), has been listed as endangered in the range of its northeastern population (USFWS 1987a), and two other beach-dwelling species native to the Atlantic Coast, the northeastern beach tiger beetle (Cicindela dorsalis dorsalis) (USFWS 1990a) and the seabeach amaranth (Amaranthus pumilus) (USFWS 1993a) have been listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened species. Loggerhead sea turtles, listed as threatened since 1978, nest on 10 current or potential plover nesting beaches in North Carolina. Eighty-two percent of the 181 current and potential U.S. breeding sites listed in Appendix B support other Federal or State listed species or had historic occurrences of species that are now Federally listed; for instance, seabeach amaranth currently coincides with nesting piping plovers on most beaches in North Carolina and on the south coast of Long Island, New York, but it is now extirpated from southern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia (Weakley and Bucher 1992). Likewise, the only extant ocean beach populations of northeastern beach tiger beetle (this species is also found on the Chesapeake Bay shoreline) occur on two Massachusetts sites that are also used by piping plovers, but this insect was once considered abundant on ocean beaches from Massachusetts to New Jersey (USFWS 1994d). Unlike many endangered or threatened species, none of the Atlantic beach species mentioned above is an endemic species; thus, their status indicates widespread ecological problems.
These threatened and endangered beach species that breed along the Atlantic Coast have many threats in common with the piping plover. Habitat loss and degradation due to shoreline development and beach stabilization and crushing by off-road vehicles are cited as major factors contributing to the listing of the northeastern beach tiger beetle (USFWS 1990a) and seabeach amaranth (USFWS 1993a). The most prominent threat to the endangered roseate tern is the loss of nesting sites to expanding numbers of nesting herring and great black-backed gulls (USFWS 1987a), also a significant cause of reduced piping plover numbers and productivity at some Atlantic Coast nesting beaches.
If the precarious status of these species is a symptom of an embattled ecosystem, then remedial efforts aimed at the restoration of the natural processes that maintain this system, rather than single-species "fixes," are likely to have the greatest long-term benefits. Important components of ecologically-sound barrier beach management include perpetuation of natural dynamic coastal formation processes; management of human recreation to prevent or minimize adverse impacts on dune formation, vegetation, and the invertebrate and vertebrate fauna; and efforts to counter the effects of human-induced changes in the types, distribution, numbers, and activity patterns of predators.
No piping plover recovery efforts implemented to date have been harmful to the natural functions of the beach ecosystem. Many protection efforts for piping plovers have also benefitted other sensitive beach species, such as least terns and seabeach amaranth, and the reverse (benefits to piping plovers from protection efforts targeted at other species, such as least terns) has also occurred. However, some piping plovers protection measures have been tailored to the specific needs of this species in ways that limit benefits to the beach ecosystem as a whole. For example, in an effort to reduce conflicts with beach users, off-road vehicle management recommendations in Appendix G seek to minimize the size and duration of vehicle closures. While these short duration closures prevent mortality and harassment of piping plovers and provide some benefits to other beach nesting birds, they would provide insufficient protection for northeastern beach tiger beetles. An extreme example of single-species protection is the use of predator exclosures to reduce depredation of plover eggs. Nonetheless, in many situations, exclosures provide by far the most effective and efficient protection against prolific entrenched predators, where reductions in predator numbers would be very difficult to achieve and very temporary. Implementation of more ecosystem-oriented approaches to piping plover protection would provide important benefits to other rare species and merit serious consideration, but it should be recognized that, in many cases, these approaches would entail significantly higher costs and/or cause more conflicts with human beach users.
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URL address http://pipingplover.fws.gov/
Last updated March 15, 2000