FLORENCE — The western snowy plover, a small shorebird on the government’s list of threatened species, is regaining 50 acres of open sand habitat eight miles south of Florence.
The Siuslaw National Forest has started work on its largest plover habitat restoration project by using heavy equipment to remove vegetation along the beach between the Siltcoos River and the Oregon Dunes day use area.
The $240,000 three-year project will create 50 acres of open sand habitat.
The forest service said plovers have little to no nesting area within the area due to thick non-native vegetation. Once completed, the restoration is expected to benefit a variety of other native plant and wildlife species, in addition to the threatened western snowy plover, it said.
“For the first time in 60 years plovers will have continuous breeding habitat in the Siltcoos River area,” said Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area wildlife biologist Cindy Burns. “Over the last 25 years we’ve restored small pockets of habitat, which helped revive the plover population. Presently, the plovers have outgrown these microhabitats and it’s time to give them more room to thrive. We’ve already seen the plovers running around the construction site; they are ready to move in.”
Over time, invasive European beachgrass altered the formation of the sand dunes along the Oregon coast, changing the landscape and reducing its usefulness for species like the plover, the forest service said. After its introduction, the invasive grass stabilized shifting sand, facilitating the development of thick pockets of vegetation and steep, cliffy foredunes. But this change also reduced the area’s suitability for the western snowy plover, which rely on large expanses of dry sand near the tideline to nest, feed, and protect their young.
The first phase of the restoration will create about 25 acres of open sand habitat and is expected to be completed in February before nesting season begins mid-March. After plover nesting season ends mid-September, the project will continue through winter 2025.
Recreation areas near the project such as the Oregon Dunes day use area and the surrounding trailheads, will remain open to the public.
Plover recovery
About 12 percent of Oregon beaches are closed for plovers, with the bulk of those in Lane, Douglas and Coos counties. Specific management plans are in place in those three counties to try to ensure that a total statewide plover population that dropped to only about 50 birds in the 1990s is protected going forward.
There are no closed beaches in Lincoln County.
Jodie Delavan, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson, told YachatsNews last summer that efforts to survey and assess the birds over a long period is helping wildlife stewards with the overall goal of restoring plovers to traditional areas they have long been pushed out of.
“Long-term monitoring of plovers in Oregon shows our population is doing well and expanding to reclaim its former nesting range,” Delavan said. “The fact that our population remains well and above recovery goals really speaks to the amazing partnerships we have here.”
The numbers of nests and chicks all along the coast were also up in 2023, Cheryl Strong, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Newport, told YachatsNews last summer.
In the traditional nesting area for plovers, which extends from Florence to Bandon, a total of 546 nests have been found and monitored by plover biologists, Strong said. While information on fledglings from these sites hasn’t yet been tallied, the overall nest success appears to be “low-to-average” at about 22 percent.
Overall, Strong said, “The population remains well above our recovery goal of 200 plovers in Oregon.”
That invasive European beach grass was planted for the purpose of stopping dunes from migrating/moving. Doing so also changed the coast line/the beaches in Oregon because stabilization of the sometimes giant dunes deprived beaches of that sand. It also meant the route of U.S. Highway 101 was no longer at risk of having dunes migrate onto and across it. There are some photos of dune movement/migration in old copies of Oregon Geology, a publication issued (or it was at one time) by Oregon’s Department of Geology and Mines or Mining Industry. I’m not a fan of European beach grass — I’d far rather see snowy plovers thrive and multiply, but I wonder how well the Forest Service will do at preventing it from slowly moving back into those 50 acres.
If you’d like to see dune migration/movement, look at the North end of Fred Meyer parking lot in Florence or Oak St at it’s dead end where it intersects the north parking lot behind Leisure Excav and South of Florence just a few miles at 101 and Clear Lake Rd.
I have no love for Dune grass either, but it saved my bacon when living next door to Driftwood Shores on the beach where a sand dune would easily have joined me in bed (1st Floor) any day, but was held back by about 18″ of thick Dune grass. So it was doing the job for which it was intended. But then again a bunch of plovers and their eggs in bed would likely be unpleasant also and I am thankful for not needing a camel to walk the beach. I happen to think the plovers are beautiful, as in my mind, they are part of any picture of the Oregon Coastal waves washing ashore. Achieving balance of caring for and managing anything like this, or anything for that matter, has never been handled well in Oregon and it’s getting worse, a lot worse. And that’s the point!
Well, it’s because about 50 % of we Oregonians I think are probably a lot like me. Not sure, just an educated guess. Given that, those reading this longwinded response to a simple beachgrass issue might not only be better understood but more importantly, bring our State back to some sense of peace, honesty, hard work, genuine empathy and sanity.
Bottom line here is, given all of the above, my fear is the typical governmental efforts and management of anything, even as simple as beach grass. History over decades proves that government and the other 50% of our state will hugely overreact, hit it too far, screw up all kinds of groups plus our state not even considered. Where are our governors like Tom McCall and Vic Atiyeh?
We can change this starting now. Please vote and get involved or we will lose the other 50%.
I am happy to see this project which will also help the beautiful endangered pink sand verbena (Abronia umbellata), which shares the snowy plover habitat preference.