Snow Patrol

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Two deter­mined South­ern Cal­i­for­nia biol­o­gists are on a mis­sion to save one of our cutest, and most besieged, birds. Jog­gers, surfers, and dogs had bet­ter watch out.

by David Sei­de­man, Audubon Mag­a­zine

It seems remark­able that Cristina San­doval and Stacey Vigal­lon had never met, never even talked on the phone, till the day I bring them together on Sandoval’s home turf in Santa Bar­bara, Cal­i­for­nia. For the past few years the two biol­o­gists have com­mu­ni­cated only through email chains about a cause to which both have ded­i­cated their pro­fes­sional lives: staving off the extinc­tion of the west­ern snowy plover.

The sparrow-sized shore­bird has been fed­er­ally threat­ened on the Pacific coast since 1993, and in 2006 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice rejected an effort to delist it. About 2,000 breed­ing pairs live along the U.S. Pacific Coast, 90 per­cent of them in Cal­i­for­nia. One of the last best hopes for the species rests on the 1,500-acre Coal Oil Point Reserve, a beach and coastal wet­land owned and oper­ated by the Uni­ver­sity of California-Santa Bar­bara and an Audubon-designated Impor­tant Bird Area. Audubon regards a por­tion of the reserve as one of the top 10 bird­ing spots in the nation west of the Mis­sis­sippi. San­doval, a biol­o­gist at the uni­ver­sity, over­sees an award-winning pro­gram that has bright­ened prospects for the plover and many other shorebirds.

Her efforts cen­ter on Sands Beach. In win­ter the 400-yard sliver of coast hosts the nation’s largest con­cen­tra­tion of feed­ing and rest­ing snowy plovers, as many as 400. Among them are 20 breed­ing pairs, which pro­duce some 50 chicks each spring in a place where there had been none for sev­eral decades until nine years ago, when San­doval began cor­don­ing off their habi­tat and edu­cat­ing the pub­lic. “The plover biol­o­gists said maybe you’d get a nest or two because it’s such a small, dense place,” says the Brazilian-born sci­en­tist, who left her coun­try because she grew too depressed watch­ing sug­ar­cane fields replace native habi­tat. “We were all wrong. We now have 20 pairs each year that are stay­ing in breed­ing sea­son and are a few feet away from each other.”

Vigallon’s focus is on L.A.’s Dock­weiler Beach, cheek by jowl with LAX Air­port. Although today she has trav­eled a mere 100 miles to Sands Beach, her expe­ri­ence as the Los Ange­les Audubon Society’s direc­tor of inter­pre­ta­tion is a world apart from Sandoval’s expe­ri­ence in Santa Bar­bara. Dock­weiler hasn’t seen a plover hatch since the 1940s; the “snowies,” as they’re affec­tion­ately called, sim­ply can’t com­pete with the hordes of human vis­i­tors each sum­mer, though Vigallon’s tal­ents are inspir­ing ele­men­tary and high school stu­dents to rally to her cause.

Like most endan­gered crea­tures, the snowy plover is an “umbrella species,” serv­ing as a sur­ro­gate for pro­tect­ing other wildlife shar­ing the same habi­tat. In the pres­ence of healthy plover pop­u­la­tions, researchers have noted higher num­bers of such shore­birds as sander­lings, west­ern sand­pipers, whim­brels, black-bellied plovers, long-billed curlews, and west­ern gulls. To under­stand you need look no fur­ther than the con­trast at Sands Beach between the areas that are open to and off-limits to beach­go­ers. On one side much of the beach has been worn about as smooth as a bil­liard table by the foot traf­fic of surfers, jog­gers, and strollers. The other side, beyond the rope “fence,” is untram­meled sand dunes—“the most dynamic and frag­ile nat­ural for­ma­tions,” accord­ing to the Cal­i­for­nia Coastal Com­mis­sion. San­doval received an award in 2003 for her plover pro­gram from The Nat­ural Areas Asso­ci­a­tion. On steep ridges, the vibrant col­ors of native wild­flow­ers, includ­ing red and pink sand ver­bena, are aflame against the sand’s tan can­vas. “There are species here you can find few other places,” San­doval says. “Most peo­ple are unaware that a beach sys­tem like this can host so many plants and wildlife. A lot of them live underground.”

Bend­ing down, she points to intri­cate grooves in the sand formed by the under­ground move­ments of cil­i­ated sand bee­tles. She digs one up and holds it in her hand, let­ting it mean­der across her palm. “Audubon vol­un­teers are always ask­ing what makes that track in the sand,” Vigal­lon responds. “So mys­te­ri­ous!” San­doval explains these bee­tles have wings but are flight­less; it’s believed they move on drift­wood. She gen­tly puts this one back down and it promptly dis­ap­pears, bur­row­ing back into the sand. Scur­ry­ing about is the glo­bose dune bee­tle, a fed­eral species of spe­cial con­cern, owing to its depen­dence on California’s coastal dunes.
“This is what a real beach looks like,” San­doval says, walk­ing toward the shore­line. “The plovers love this type of over­wash with rocks and kelp wrack.” This wrack con­sists of heaps of kelp filled with flies, mag­gots, and beach hoppers—a ver­i­ta­ble avian feast. Vigal­lon is brim­ming with envy. For much of the year Dock­weiler and other beaches in Los Ange­les are rou­tinely groomed with trucks to clear them of human detri­tus and to make the sands as wel­come as the French Riviera’s. “We have lit­er­ally miles of peo­ple,” she explains with a shrug. “There’s bro­ken glass, dia­pers, Buf­falo wings. It’s a safety haz­ard. If you don’t remove that, the beaches are hor­ri­bly pol­luted.” The prob­lem is that the cleanup crews elim­i­nate the sand dunes as well. And there go the nest­ing spots.

In the dis­tance beyond the ropes we catch our first glimpses of the feath­ery wisps, which weigh just two ounces. Hop­ping around, they look like cot­ton balls on chop­sticks. Run and freeze. Run and freeze. They scam­per and stop to avoid detec­tion by preda­tors. Sander­lings, for which plovers are fre­quently mis­taken, do the same thing. San­doval imi­tates the move, doing a lit­tle jit­ter and stick­ing her rump out.

Our smiles broaden watch­ing three two-day-old chicks—downy dan­de­lion fluffs bounc­ing to and fro—whose col­ors match the beach sand. “They’re so cute!” Vigal­lon exclaims. “You can put one in your pocket!” And their white chest plumage, from which they derive their name, is, well, pure as the dri­ven snow.

The female deserts her brood in search of another mate about six days after the chicks hatch. (Breed­ing sea­son lasts about six months.) The male then assumes the role of care­taker. The “brand-new chicks,” as San­doval calls them, stay within a few feet of their nests.

San­doval climbs over the rope to inspect nests and asks Vigal­lon and me to fol­low in her foot­steps. Like terns and killdeers, snowies nest in scrapes, or small, shal­low bowls they form in the sand by using their bel­lies and feet. An unwit­ting beach stroller could almost be for­given for mis­tak­ing the eggs inside the scrapes for peb­bles. But, sur­pris­ingly, the snowies’ arch neme­sis may not be the surfers, kite fliers, Fris­bee play­ers, or sun­bathers. A com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey by Kevin Laf­ferty, a USGS biol­o­gist and Sandoval’s hus­band, con­cluded that dogs, espe­cially when unleashed, wreak more havoc than peo­ple pass­ing by. They kill chicks, and the plovers waste pre­cious energy fly­ing away, or leave their eggs, which, notes Laf­ferty, “may die due to expo­sure or predation.”

Just before we step over the rope, San­doval points to another chick, an extra-puffy one on the verge of fledg­ing. A wave sud­denly rolls in, soak­ing our feet. Almost on cue, a jog­ger leaps over the rope to stay dry. She forces one plover into another’s ter­ri­tory, trig­ger­ing a brawl as the com­bat­ants go breast to breast, their wings flap­ping. San­doval shouts at the jog­ger to get back. “When the tide is high they do this all the time,” she fumes with her slight Brazil­ian accent. “The run­ner has no idea. She prob­a­bly goes home and says, ‘I didn’t do any­thing ille­gal.’ We say we man­age plovers. We actu­ally man­age peo­ple. I pre­fer to man­age plovers because they do not say a bad word.”

San­doval recalled a woman plop­ping down on her beach towel right next to a nest. She refused to move until San­doval pointed it out to her and a fran­tic female bird feigned a bro­ken wing by drag­ging it in the sand, a decoy to dis­tract preda­tors from nestlings. The inter­loper apol­o­gized and moved.

Early on she had to get a restrain­ing order after a surly surfer threat­ened to burn down her house. Two days before my visit, a stranger star­tled her hus­band, the biol­o­gist, approach­ing him on the beach. The man turned out to be the surfer, and he extended his hand to apol­o­gize for being a “jerk” dur­ing a period in his life when he did some jail time. He announced that he had come around to Sandoval’s way of thinking.

“Peo­ple fear change,” Vigal­lon says. “They see things in black and white. This is a pub­lic resource. This is a very pos­i­tive experience.”

I sug­gest San­doval add the ex-inmate to the ros­ter of 100 vol­un­teer docents in her pro­gram, which is co-managed with Santa Bar­bara Audubon and already includes a num­ber of surfers, engi­neers, and a city coun­cil­man. She likes the idea. After all, each vol­un­teer must first take train­ing in non­vi­o­lent con­fronta­tion (even if some carry sling­shots to scare off crows that get too close to eggs or chicks). “You have to be empa­thetic,” she says: “ ‘I am sorry to dis­turb you, but did you know we have plovers here?’ Sure we can use brute force, police­men, and war­dens. But you gain a friend over time.”

San­doval enjoys the dis­tinct advan­tage of oper­at­ing with a free hand on uni­ver­sity prop­erty, unre­stricted by the bureau­cratic lay­ers Vigal­lon must grap­ple with in Los Ange­les. At the same time, how­ever, Vigal­lon can work a lit­tle Hol­ly­wood magic. She and her hus­band, Robert Jef­fers, a film and Eng­lish teacher at Dorsey, an inner-city high school, col­lab­o­rated with three stu­dents on an inspi­ra­tional three-minute video (view­able on YouTube at youtube.com/losangelesaudubon) pro­mot­ing aware­ness and pro­tec­tion of plovers. The stu­dents had learned about the issues through their work film­ing peo­ple remov­ing inva­sive species from beaches and join­ing bird counts. At a stu­dent film fes­ti­val, Fox stu­dio exec­u­tives awarded their video a top prize.

A self-described “nature nerd,” Vigal­lon has also used her grad­u­ate degree in wildlife sci­ence, a cer­tifi­cate in sci­en­tific illus­tra­tion, and a grant from the Togeth­er­Green Pen­nies for the Planet cam­paign to engage two inner-city Los Ange­les ele­men­tary schools, Leo Politi and Weemes, in the cre­ation of signs pub­li­ciz­ing the snowies’ plight and ask­ing beach­go­ers to keep out of fenced areas. Before tak­ing field trips to observe and col­lect data, almost none of the chil­dren knew the birds even existed.

Vigal­lon has the energy of a whirling dervish. She has launched a vol­un­teer pro­gram of her own, part of which is mod­eled after Sandoval’s, through a joint effort between Los Ange­les Audubon, Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon, and Santa Mon­ica Audubon. “We want to be mak­ing peo­ple feel included,” says Vigal­lon, “instead of mak­ing them feel wrong.” Since the sum­mer crazi­ness sub­sided, she has begun a series of two-hour “plover-centric” walks for var­i­ous school groups at Dock­weiler Beach, explor­ing water­shed ecol­ogy. “In the fall, win­ter, and spring, L.A. County beaches are a great place to view wildlife and find some soli­tude,” she says. “I hope that L.A. Audubon’s pro­gram at Dock­weiler can intro­duce the pub­lic to view­ing their beaches in a new way. Pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple to con­nect with nature in the place where they live, espe­cially in a city like Los Ange­les, is extremely impor­tant in get­ting peo­ple to under­stand and sup­port con­ser­va­tion. Yes, nature is in far­away places like Alaska and the Ama­zon, but it’s also right here in Los Ange­les! We just have to take the time to look and teach oth­ers how to look.”

Back in Santa Bar­bara, San­doval takes a brief pause from plover watch­ing to pon­der the harsh real­i­ties intrud­ing on her par­adise. Loom­ing just a mile off­shore is a mas­sive oil rig, a con­stant reminder of the 1969 blowout in Santa Bar­bara that helped usher in an era of envi­ron­men­tal reform. Off these same shores, Goleta, the world’s second-biggest nat­ural oil seep, gives Coal Oil Point its name and coats many plovers, grebes, cor­morants, and loons with tar—keeping a wildlife care net­work busy. So far fierce local resis­tance has kept the oil industry’s expan­sion efforts at bay. Then there’s the mat­ter of global warm­ing, a threat to all shore­birds as ris­ing sea lev­els flood their territory.

Nev­er­the­less she derives immense pride from the way that nature, if given half a chance, can restore itself. “I look at the big pic­ture,” she says. “We’ve gone from no nest­ing to reg­u­lar nest­ing in nine years. The dunes have grown back. The plovers have responded so well that I think this is a model.”

Both she and Vigal­lon har­bor high hopes about the tide shift­ing from recre­ation to wildlife enjoy­ment as the ranks of bird­ers to their sites swell. “Where else can you see beach-nesting birds in their nests?” San­doval asks. “When­ever you show the snowy plovers you get the same reac­tion: ‘They’re easy to watch. How cute!’ ”

“They do not fly away like con­dors,” adds Vigal­lon, who would be the first to tell you that the snowies’ star power is sav­ing the day, at least for now. As humans encroach ever fur­ther into shore­bird habi­tat across the world, con­flicts will only inten­sify. Cen­tral cast­ing could not have come up with a more adorable crea­ture on which to base a peace­ful coex­is­tence than the snowy plover.

Sci­en­tific name: Charadrius alexan­dri­nus
Looks: A sparrow-sized waif, as pale as dry sand, with darker marks on face and neck.
Range and habi­tat: Sandy beaches of the Pacific Coast, from Wash­ing­ton to Baja. Other pop­u­la­tions in inte­rior of west­ern U.S. and Mex­ico, Gulf Coast and Caribbean, and west­ern South Amer­ica, with closely related forms wide­spread in the Old World.
Behav­ior: For­ages on open flats, alone or in small flocks. Nest is a sim­ple scrape on the ground, lined with bits of debris.
Sta­tus: Pacific Coast pop­u­la­tion is prob­a­bly fewer than 4,000, rep­re­sent­ing a decline from ear­lier decades.
Threats: Its lim­ited nest­ing habi­tat is being degraded by increas­ing beach use by humans (with their vehi­cles, pets, and inten­sive beach-cleaning meth­ods). Inva­sive plants and increas­ing preda­tor pop­u­la­tions also have an impact, and oil spills and other pol­lu­tants pose a poten­tial threat.
Out­look: In the near term, its sur­vival depends on the pro­tec­tion of essen­tial nest­ing habitats.