The Piping Plover is listed as an endangered species by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). These small shorebirds arrive in their breeding grounds in April or May, nesting along sandbars, coastlines, and lake shores. About one-quarter of Canada's Piping Plovers are found in Atlantic Canada; most others are in the Prairies. Regardless of their location, their numbers have been declining.

The biggest single reason for that drop is the loss of habitat and most of that loss is caused by human disturbances around nesting sites. Those disturbances range from building activities to the recreational use of beaches. Piping Plovers also are vulnerable to attacks by pets such as dogs and cats, crows, seagulls, and raccoons which are drawn to the area by litter left by picnickers or other beach users.

The Atlantic Beach Guardian Program is funded in large part through the federal government's Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk. The goal of the Habitat Stewardship Program is to contribute to the recovery and protection of habitat for species at risk, and for other species of special concern. The program encourages Canadians to care for the environment by monitoring and conserving wildlife species and habitats, as well as protecting and improving the quality of soil, water, air and other natural resources. Conservation, particularly protecting the areas where species at risk live, is essential to their recovery and to prevent other species from becoming at risk.

Canadians are involved in projects funded through the Habitat Stewardship Program across the country. Many beaches in Atlantic Canada are included in the Beach Guardian Program, which monitors beaches to protect wildlife and minimize damage to wildlife and habitat. Individual concerned citizens, community groups, educational institutions and non-governmental organizations work together with government to conserve species and habitats.

The Beach Guardian Program covers seashores and sand dunes, lake sides and marshes – any areas near water where wildlife habitat is sensitive. These areas are coming under increasing pressure from contact by humans. Houses and cottages are built on beaches. People are riding all-terrain vehicles on beaches and along watercourses. New businesses – tourism, aquaculture, commercial seaweed harvesting, among others – are bringing more people to sensitive areas. It is important for Canadians to realize that something as innocent as a waterside trek or a picnic can damage sensitive habitats and threaten species at risk.

Piping Plover Guardian and Education Programs in Newfoundland aim to improve the long-term conservation, protection and public awareness of the Piping Plover and other species at risk in southwestern Newfoundland. The federal contribution this year is $41,000. Matching funding from other sources of $15,000 produces total funding this year of $56,000.

Habitat Stewardship Program funding in 2000 was used to begin an education and Beach Guardian Program to monitor all wildlife activity on ecologically important and sensitive beach habitats used by Piping Plovers and other endangered species. The project maintains and increases that program with public education programs, training volunteers to participate in conservation activities, and seeking support from local landowners. The Program covers all areas where Piping Plovers are found: Grand Bay West to Cape Ray, Codroy Valley, St. George's/Flat Bay, and Burgeo.

The Piping Plover used to be found along the northeast coast of Newfoundland near Lumsden and along the west coast within Gros Morne National Park. Now, it is found only in a few locations along the southwest coast, on beaches that are used regularly by people, pets including horses, all-terrain vehicles and pickup trucks. These areas are the focus of this project. Long-term protection of the Piping Plover requires both conservation of their habitat and public education about their endangered status and their needs. Several community groups are participating in this project. The Beach Guardian Program will monitor Piping Plover activity regularly, document activities on these beaches and inform beach users about the impacts of their activities on the Piping Plover population and this rare Newfoundland ecosystem. Curbing destructive activities is the only way the Piping Plover can be saved, so a public education program is essential to the success of these conservation efforts.

The project monitors the population of Piping Plovers including its distribution within the region, identifies essential breeding habitat and management practices required to maintain the species, protects and enhances that habitat, and develops information programs as well as volunteer programs. The programs educate children through school presentations, summer activities, and contests.

The Piping Plover Beach Guardian Project is one part of a two-part program. The second part is Rare Air: audio documentaries of the Piping Plover in Newfoundland, an integral part of the public education program. (See separate project description.)

The Partners in the project include: the Alder Institute; Marine and Mountain Zone Board Corporation; Newfoundland & Labrador Department of Forest Resources and Agrifoods; Newfoundland & Labrador Department of Tourism, Parks and Recreation; Southwest Coast Development Association; The Natural History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador; and the Town of Port aux Basques.

The project coordinator is The Marine and Mountain Zone Board Corporation, based in Grand Bay. It is a regional economic development board for the southwest coast portion of Newfoundland and is involved in development issues such as tourism, aquaculture, agrifoods and information technology. For the past four years, it has employed Piping Plover guardians on the Grand Bay West beach and is committed to preserving the beach ecosystem and its species at risk.

This project is Part Two of the Piping Plover Guardian and Education Programs in Newfoundland. The aim is to improve long-term conservation and protection of the Piping Plover by increasing public awareness of the Plover and other species at risk in southwestern Newfoundland. The Habitat Stewardship Program is providing $25,500 to the Rare Air Project. Matching funding from other levels of government and non-governmental organizations will provide total funding of $116,665 for the project.

The numbers of Piping Plovers and the size of the territory over which they range have shrunk in Newfoundland, where there has so far been little in the way of public education or guardianship programs. Recovery of the species depends on expanding education and guardianship programs begun last year.

Audio documentaries are one way to reach the diverse public audience in southwestern Newfoundland. Audio reaches people at all literacy levels and often encourages audience participation. The RARE AIR project will create documentaries and radio announcements in both English and French to serve both linguistic communities in the area. RARE AIR will feature the behaviour and ecology of the Piping Plover, its habitat, local threats to its survival, the activities of beach guardians to protect the birds, scientific efforts to learn more about the species, and landowners' concerns about sharing their land with an endangered species. The documentaries will take listeners to the beaches plovers share with recreational users and all-terrain vehicles, introduce them to the scientists and guardians who are trying to preserve the plovers, and talk with neighbours who are interested in helping the plovers recover. The RARE AIR project wants listeners to hear themselves and members of their own communities talk about conservation and the complexities of rebuilding the Piping Plover population and habitat.

The project will produce three hour-long documentaries in English and one in French as well as two Public Service Announcements in English and two in French. The documentaries will be professionally recorded and produced digitally. The primary audience for the programs will be southwestern Newfoundland. The documentaries also will be broadcast on the southeast coast of Newfoundland and on 11 community radio stations across North America. They also will be available by request on cassette tapes and compact disks. The documentaries will be housed in an Internet archive for at least two years. They will be accessible to anyone with Internet access, including students, teachers, tourists and residents. The project hopes to expand to include programs involving more species at risk and to use RARE AIR as a model for future radio and audio Internet programs.

The partners in the RARE AIR documentaries project are: the Alder Institute; Marine and Mountain Zone Board Corporation; Newfoundland & Labrador Department of Forest Resources and Agrifoods; Newfoundland & Labrador Department of Tourism, Parks and Recreation; Southwest Coast Development Association; The Natural History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador; and the Town of Port aux Basques;

The project is coordinated by The Alder Institute, a non-profit collective that works to include an ecological point of view in public discourse, and to translating science into common language. The Institute broadcasts a community radio show Open Air: Natural History Radio from Newfoundland and Labrador twice a week on CHMR-FM Radio, the community radio station in St. John's and is available to the world from CHMR's Web site. Alder's Web site is http://alder.nf.ca.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) provides independent scientific and expert advice to governments on the status of wildlife species in Canada. COSEWIC is composed of professional scientists from universities, museums, provinces and territories, national conservation organizations and federal agencies as well as experts with Aboriginal traditional knowledge and community knowledge who meet the established credentials. The Committee has placed 353 wild species in its risk categories. Those categories are:

• Extinct - Species no longer exists. (examples: Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon)
  
  
• Extirpated - Species no longer exists in the wild in Canada, but occurs elsewhere. (examples: Black-Footed Ferret, Pygmy Short-horned Lizard)
  
  
• Endangered - Species facing imminent extinction or extirpation. (examples: St. Lawrence Beluga Whale, Swift Fox, Burrowing Owl, Leatherback Turtle)
  
  
• Threatened - Species likely to become endangered if limiting factors are not reversed. (examples: Wood Bison, Peregrine Falcon, American Chestnut Tree)
  
  
• Special Concern - Species are of special concern because of characteristics that make them particularly sensitive to human activities or natural events. (examples: Grizzly Bear, Atlantic Cod, Monarch Butterfly)
  
  

Paul Chamberland
Environment Canada
Canadian Wildlife Service, Atlantic Region
Tel: (506) 364-5049