The Piping Plover relies entirely on beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and Great Lakes for every aspect of its daily needs.

A SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry professor and his team have been trying to save the shorebird through their conservation efforts.

“If you see a Piping Plover with an orange flag, you’ll know it came from the Great Lakes Population,” said Alison Koceck, vice president of Onondaga Audubon, an organization that focuses on conservation of birds and other wildlife native to Central and Northern New York. “There’s a large working group called the New York Great Lakes Piping Plover Working Group. It’s a group that consists of several agencies, universities and nonprofit organizations."

Koceck says in the 1980s, the Piping Plovers went extinct from the Lake Ontario Shoreline.

“And they only returned to breeding on our shoreline in around 2015,” said Kocek.

Koceck says the disturbance of their habitat on the beach is a key reason why the shorebird’s population is low.

“So when we’re having fun on the beach, we might not notice that we’re running by a plover’s nest and it might disturb the parent’s away and they’re unable to successfully rear their young because of that,” said Kocek.

The Ononadaga Audubon has been working with recreationists to save space for the birds and keeping the shorelines intact.

“We cut down some trees and cleared vegetation from some areas. Every time we have done that or our partners have done it, clovers have come and nested in those places which is great,” said Jonathan Cohen, professor of wildlife ecology and management at SUNY ESF.

Cohen says, unfortunately in the last two years, predators began finding the plovers.

“People, they go to the beach, then they leave there and there’s scraps of food that they brought and that attracts foxes and crows and possums and raccoons and all things that would eat clovers and their eggs,” said Cohen.

Molly Picillo is a Ph.D student under Cohen. She is looking at the impact of captive rearing.

“And if a nest is abandoned, we’ll collect the eggs, we’ll bring them to the zoo to be raised in captivity. But then we re-release these birds that came from the wild [and otherwise] just weren’t going to survive,” said Picillo.

Picillo says according to her model, if they don’t continue captive rearing, the birds would go extinct.

“I mean, I get the honor of seeing these birds; why do people in 100 years not get that honor?” said Picillo.

In 2024, only one pair nested, but they failed to reproduce due to predators.