MAINE PUBLIC • July 9, 2024
Beaches change all the time, as sand moves and shifts naturally, said Laura Minich Zitske, director of the coastal birds project at Maine Audubon. But the storm damage this year was something different. Decades of development have interrupted the wide, sandy beaches plovers need to nest. The construction of housing, jetties and seawalls has cost plovers about two thirds of the Maine beaches used as nesting habitat, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The plover population in Maine was down to just a handful of breeding pairs back in the early 1980s. Last year nearly 160 nesting pairs were sighted.