Op-Ed

Please Don’t Blame the Birds

Published in the Portland Press Herald, July 13, 2005

Denied a permit at the last minute, the town of Ogunquit's Fourth of July fireworks display could have gotten authorization this year.

And if the town's business leaders are ready to follow recommendations made by wildlife officials many months ago, Ogunquit's skies can light up next July.

Here's why.

Every spring, small, buff-colored and endangered piping plovers, thin and worn after flying hundreds of miles from their wintering grounds in the Gulf of Mexico, land on Ogunquit beach and nearby areas, one of the few stretches of oceanfront sand in the state. Females lay tiny, speckled eggs barely visible in the sand where they make their nests.

Local volunteers who monitor the beach as part of the Piping Plover Recovery Project that Maine Audubon coordinates with towns, private landowners and wildlife agencies, are likely to spot the nest. Maine Audubon staff then quickly erect a fence to protect it, and dedicated volunteers continue to monitor the nest and the plovers' activities. Soon the eggs are ready to hatch.

Then comes the night of July 4 and the town's fireworks display. Suddenly, thousands of people are crowded onto a beach that at high tide offers only 50 feet between the dunes and water. Police, already spread thinly, can't stand guard near the nest.

The crowd's boisterous activity will likely force the parents to abandon the eggs. Just days before all-too-rare chicks would have boosted an endangered population that biologists have labored to increase from 10 pairs in 1981 to 55 pairs in 2004, all of the work and resources expended on their behalf is lost.

Naturally, wildlife officials want to make sure this doesn't happen - in fact, the U.S. Endangered Species Act requires them to make sure. Only 45 pairs of piping plovers are currently nesting in the entire state of Maine. Their habitat is developed and degraded. Once extinct, a species is gone forever.

So in January of this year, Maine's Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service let Ogunquit officials know that some changes would need to happen before fireworks could be launched so close to piping plover nests.

Wildlife managers were confident that with more than six months to collaborate, they could work with the town for a solution that allowed piping plover protection as well as Fourth of July fireworks.

Between January and May, Maine Audubon participated in meetings with Ogunquit officials to discuss the wildlife agencies' recommended changes. The Town Council agreed that if a permit was sought for a fireworks display, the seeker would have to show how the birds would be protected, including clearing part of the beach the afternoon of July 4 and posting enough police to keep the space cleared overnight.

In addition, DIF&W spelled out its recommendations in a June 6 letter to the Ogunquit Chamber of Commerce, the group most likely to seek a fireworks permit.

Given that federal and state wildlife officials reached out early and consistently to help Ogunquit make possible both its annual pyrotechnics show and the safety of piping plovers, Maine Audubon was surprised when a news account as well as individuals blamed the birds for holding up the display permit.

Clearly, it's the human species that held up the permit by failing to find a solution.

The Ogunquit council was wise to turn down the permit request for an event that could have spelled disaster for the eight plovers nesting on Ogunquit's beach this year, nearly 10 percent of Maine's breeding population.

Even without the large display that was proposed, on the morning of July 5 plover monitors discovered, along with evidence of illegal camping and fireworks, that four recently hatched piping plover chicks had disappeared overnight.

Piping plovers and beachgoers have coexisted in Maine for years. Maine Audubon is dedicated to ensuring they continue to coexist, not only by bringing together landowners, municipalities, volunteers and others to protect the birds, but also by helping interested parties work together in the coming months to follow the recommendations set forth earlier this year.

Thus we can find a solution that allows piping plover protection and a July 4 fireworks celebration in 2006, if the town wants one.

Jody Jones is a Maine Audubon wildlife ecologist and coordinator of the Piping Plover Recovery Project.

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