By Plover Program Director Ben Pearl
The 2018 breeding season was an eventful one for Snowy Plovers here in the South San Francisco Bay. SFBBO staff faced cold and drizzly mornings to start the season, swarms of mosquitoes and triple digit temperatures in the middle of the summer, and long days in the field throughout. Our hard work paid off, as we monitored 269 nests in 22 ponds spread throughout the South Bay, with 79% of all nests found at Eden Landing. Pond E14, where we have invested a large amount of time and resources in recent years monitoring the large oyster shell enhancement, …
was especially busy, hosting 145 nests. This is by far the most nests ever found in any pond in the Bay Area, and to add to that, E14 also hosted 141 Least Tern nests! Although plovers and terns were heavily impacted by predators at E14 and had poor reproductive success in 2018, we are hopeful that several new management actions planned for the area will improve their success in 2019.
While SFBBO staff are accustomed to the many challenges faced by monitoring breeding plovers in the South Bay, 2018 presented an unexpected challenge early on. In 2017, SFBBO secured Endangered Species Act funding for 2018 monitoring of breeding plovers at Eden Landing. However, changes in the Trump Administrations priorities resulted in a significant delay of final approval of the grant funding, and placed the funding itself in doubt. With funding for half of our work suddenly unavailable, we turned to our neighbors at Cargill Inc., who we have built an excellent partnership with over the years
Not only did the Newark office offer a generous grant to help fund our research, but with their support we applied for and were approved for a matching grant from Cargill’s corporate office. So from SFBBO and Eden Landing plovers, we say thank you Cargill!
Ben Pearl, MS, is Director of SFBBO’s Plover Program. You can read the latest Snowy Plover Nesting Summary on our Science Reports web page.
Not only did the Newark office offer a generous grant to help fund our research, but with their support we applied for and were approved for a matching grant from Cargill’s corporate office. So from SFBBO and Eden Landing plovers, we say thank you Cargill!
Ben Pearl, MS, is Director of SFBBO’s Plover Program. You can read the latest Snowy Plover Nesting Summary on our Science Reports web page.