The Inspiring Team Effort to Save Great Lakes Piping Plovers from Extinction

The University of Michigan Biological Station in the Great Lakes region is home to the world’s only Piping Plover Captive Rearing Center.
Managed by the Detroit Zoological Society (Detroit Zoo) in collaboration with the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the facility along Douglas Lake in northern Michigan is staffed every spring and summer by avian specialists stationed at UMBS to incubate and hatch out abandoned Great Lakes piping plover eggs and care for chicks to save the federally endangered species from extinction.
“Raising young birds is a lot of work and there has been success,” said Dr. Francie Cuthbert, a professor with the University of Minnesota who started the intensive plover recovery, captive rearing and re-release program more than 30 years ago at the field station in Pellston.
The shores of the Great Lakes were once home to nearly 800 pairs of piping plovers. In 1990 that number had dropped to between 12 and 17, only in the state of Michigan on two of the Great Lakes.
In 2023 scientists counted 80 unique adult pairs of piping plovers on all five of the lakes. In the past several years, plovers have nested in every Great Lakes state except Indiana and Minnesota. Plovers also are nesting in the Canadian province of Ontario.
Last year’s total was the most since the birds were listed as endangered in 1985. That’s more than halfway to the recovery goal of 150 nesting pairs in the U.S.
Read the full story: myumi.ch/M6pV3

[@HogMan2022]

You all are awesome! 🙋

[@julierogers1155]

great work!