Sharing The Shoreline With Birds Of A Feather

The Western Snowy Plover is a threatened species, with only a few thousand remaining on the west coast, and with an average of forty who over-winter on Ocean Beach and Crissy Field in San Francisco. It is, of course, quite possible that there are more, and that we just can't see them, because they blend in to the sand so well, like camouflaged golf balls (the link above takes you to an HTML version of a document regarding the Snowy Plover Protection Program through the National Park Service; important stuff, and also controversial in some circles).

This is not actually about the plover qua plover, but more about sharing. If it is true that the best way to learn is to teach, then maybe it is equally true that the best way to see something hard to see like a plover is to show one to someone else.

Last night, Marina went with me to the beach as I roved the protected area, trying to talk to people about why it isn't so awesome to let dogs run free among threatened shorebirds; measure just how much fun teenagers have these days in terms of the percentage of signs destroyed by reckless use of markers; and hopefully glimpse a couple of the little plovers around and about. I've never been 100% confident in my ability to distinguish a plover from a sanderling, say, which would put a bit of a crimp in my ability to protect them, one would think.

But hey, if your girlfriend wants to see a plover, you get motivated to see a plover. And so, after discounting thirty sanderlings as not being the genuine article, I looked carefully through the binoculars at a small creature barely visible in a small indentation in the sand that Marina pointed out, and I said with authority that there indeed was a plover. The difference from the sanderling was now crystal clear to me, which would have been reward enough, but it was even better to see Marina's excitement as she looked at the plover through the binoculars. From there, we quickly spotted another five plovers huddled nearby.

I've always thought protecting the plovers was a great idea; now I don't need to worry about actually seeing them in the first place.

Shorelines And Shorebirds

In the evening at the shoreline, you will find flocks of sanderlings, sandpipers, gulls, Caspian terns, dowitchers, all feeding when the water recedes before scuttling away as the water floods back.

You will also find the Western Snowy Plover, a threatened shorebird that is the focus of a National Park Service protected habitat program.

When you first spot these little guys from a distance, they look like fuzzy golf balls, huddled among the stones and the other birds, helpless and fragile. There are approximately 2300 of them remaining on the Pacific Coast, and up to 100 of these can be found in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the treasures of the Bay Area, which stretches from Point Reyes National Seashore in the north to the Phleger Estate near Woodside.

They are the reasons the National Park Service is implementing the idea of "Sharing the Beach," and why dogs need to be kept on a leash between Sloat and the Beach Chalet. How would you like it if you were chased by a massive furry beast many times your size, or if a kite looked like a predator?

These birds need to be undisturbed to conserve their energy for breeding purposes. They have been on this coast for a very long time; it is their natural habitat. People might ask, "Can't they go somewhere else?" No, that's not how evolution works. And natural selection does not include oil spills, massive luxury development, careless littering of food that attracts predators.

If we are clever enough to exploit the Earth for resources, we also need to be clever enough to preserve it, to control and hopefully repair the damages we inflict. It is our ethical responsibility.

Snowy plovers--and all threatened and endangered species--need our help, now more than ever, because the administration is gutting the EPA and the Endangered Species Act.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne says they are streamlining the Endangered Species Act, permitting departments to make their own decisions about what might harm endangered plants and animals, skipping scientific evaluation of any projects, which not only removes the last vestige of value from the Environmental Pillaging Agency, but also, in the words of Kempthorne, works 'to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a “back door” to regulate the gases blamed for global warming.'

That last statement needs no comment. It is appallingly disingenuous, deceptive, and corrupt. Kempthorne is well named Dirk, as he is thrusting his namesake into the heart of the world, into everything more important than the coffers of the corporations that he and his president serve.

This makes me very angry.

There is no sense of shame in this administration, increasingly acting only at the behest of vocal and affluent minorities. There is a crisis, increasing as we are distracted by the campaign for a new administration. (Were you also aware they are now trying to label contraceptives as a form of abortion?)

As the most dominant, technologically-advantaged species on the planet, we are stewards of the world around us. Stewardship is not about consumption, but about preservation, and that is what the Park Service is trying to do, and their job may have just been made more difficult.

The silver lining, from a selfish respect, is that it has, at least for now, eliminated some of the many possibilities for future careers that I have been juggling. Gone are English Literature, Linguistics, History, any of the ivory towered academic realms that cannot be applied to preserving the world.