The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL) favorite inhabitant is taking back its shoreline as the endangered Piping Plovers first sightings were had earlier this month on April 9.
SBDNL had exciting news on April 21, according to plover lead Erica Adams.
“A female who is usually up in the sleeping bear point area arrived yesterday and she is now officially the oldest female Great Lakes Piping Plover at 15 years,” Adams said.
Her band is a combination of OS GB XY, and her nickname is Gabby. She ties two 15-year-old males to be the oldest piping plover to nest at SBDNL.
The piping plover has been labeled endangered by the federal government ever since the 1990s.
The Piping Plover has recovered from roughly 12 pairs in the nineties to 80 pairs as of 2023, which is encouraging for the program, says Adams.
A Piping Plover named “Yibbie” was the first piping plover spotted at Sleeping Bear Dunes on April 9. The first plover sighting was April 8, 2023. The earliest sighting was April 8, 2023. The earliest plover sighting to date is April 7.
The majority of the Piping Plover population resides in the southern part of the park, Glen Haven south, where some 80 pairs are located, including 50% of those pairs located on Dimmicks Point on the southeast corner of North Manitou Island as of 2023. This part of the island represents a quarter of the world’s population nesting during any season.
SBDNL partners with the University of Minnesota, Detroit Zoo and the Fish and Wildlife Service, along with other organizations and volunteer groups, to name a few.
The Detroit Zoo helps facilitate the parks captive rearing program where they are able to artificially incubate eggs that would not otherwise survive in the wild, which has been a key success for recovery of the population thanks to the Piping Plover program at SBDNL.
In 2022, SBDNL documented 32 pairs on the mainland and North Manitou Island shores.
The Piping Plover breeding season lasts between mid-April and mid-July. The Plover has come a long way, but is not out of the woods.
In 1990, there were only 12 pairs. The piping plover is a small shoreline bird that has been on the Federal Endangered Species list since 1986 Adams, along with the entire Piping Plover team at SBDNL are ready for another season that goes from April through July.
“We have a really experienced team this season and we really hit the ground running Piping,” Adams said. “New birds are coming back every day. So there’s lots to report and keep track of and we’ve had some of our favorite birds come back already ... We just wait every day to see more of them.”
Adams and the Piping Plover team at SBDN1 will host a kickoff event for volunteers on Saturday, May 11 at 10:30 a.m. at the Glen Lake Community Library in Empire.
“They’ll hear about all of the opportunities that they have to get involved that could be doing outreach and education for plovers that could be walking the beaches with their dog as part of the Bark Ranger project,” Adams said. “There’s a couple of different ways to get involved and help out the plovers here in the park ... “We’re always looking to have new people join the program. Everybody brings their own experience and skill sets and we just really build a great coalition of volunteers to help support us.”
A small population of Piping Plovers are nesting in Leelanau State Park as of 2023.
Leelanau State Park had four active nests with four pairs, and each pair laid four eggs.
In 2022, Leelanau State Park had one pair that had four eggs. Two of them hatched and fledged. For the past decade the state park didn’t have any. A partnership between SBDNL, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa, Chippewa Indians has been a huge help with the process.
