[Pier_man0909]

Heres a little history of the piping plover on Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area. there are 2 early records of the birds here. 1 pair in 1901 and 1 pair in 1902. there were no nest discovered between 1903-1960. A single nest was discovered in 1961. there were no nest discovered between 1962-1983. In 1984 there were 3 pairs. A total of 15 pairs were documented in 1989 which was THE MOST ever recorded on the seashore, only 30 birds. the numbers fell in yearly sequence 1990-2003. 14, 13, 12, 12, 11, 14, 14, 11, 9, 6, 4, 3, 2, 2. then the numbers rose until 2007 in sequence. 3, 3, 6, 6. the population was the highest last year since 1998. that was the last time there was more than 6 pairs, or 12 birds. like I said earlier, the most ever historically recorded on the seashore was 15 pairs, or 30 birds. Cape Hatteras is the southernmost area for their breeding range, which would tell you that there might not be many here in the first place. That theory is supported by those and surveys. The bird is as functionally obsolete as a brontosaurus. Just the other day one of the spots they want to close off was COMPLETELY underwater with just some of the grasses above the waters surface.. How are the birds supposed to nest successfully nest if their habitat is regularly flooded?
Here are some more numbers. The NPS started trapping and killing the predators of the birds in 2002. Since they started the have trapped and killed 76 red fox, 33 grey fox, 234 raccoons, 103 opossums, 64 feral cats, 23 nutria, 1 muskrat, 1 river otter, 1 mink, and 1 dog. The park service reported the dog as feral but it was obvious to the person who was going to put it down that it was not feral, but domesticated. It had been wearing a collar, housebroken, and social. Those numbers are what have been trapped and do not include animals shot with shotguns. Just in the last 5 years they have killed around twice as many animals as there have been birds on the beach on recored in the last 110 years! When a representative of Defenders Of Wildlife was confronted with this he said in three different quotes. "we were not aware of this", "we stand for bio-diversity", and "sometimes we have to make difficult decisions." Well which is it! Did you not know about it or was it a tough decision! Obviously if you didnt know about it it wasn't a tough decision and if it was a tough decision you had to know about it. Those numbers were taken from the 2007 piping plover report. The report did mention human disturbances. It said there was 249 pedestrian disturbances and 25 orv disturbances. Those disturbances were recorded by the resource staff. What I dont understand is if someone is walking where they arent supposed to (I seriously doubt they were breaking the law on purpose) why werent they told to get out? If it is really that big of a problem they why is the enclosure pretty much just a piece of string. And more importantly why is human disturbance of walking withing 500 feet of a nest that big of a deal when you have resource staff walking up to the nest, counting the eggs and in some cases capturing the birds and putting a band on their leg. If you ask me that would be more of a disturbance than someone who is 475 feet away from a nest.