After reviewing and evaluating public comments, the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service announced today that it has designated critical habitat for the Northern Great Plains population of piping plover, an imperiled migratory shorebird. This designation includes 183,422 acres of habitat and 1,207.5 river miles in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
Designated areas of critical habitat include prairie alkali wetlands and surrounding shoreline; river channels and associated sandbars and islands; and reservoirs and inland lakes and their sparsely vegetated shorelines, peninsulas, and islands. These areas provide primary courtship, nesting, foraging, sheltering, brood-rearing and dispersal habitat for piping plovers.
"The Service designated only those lands that we determined were essential to the plover
