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I'm Vince Cavalieri with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and I am the Great Lakes
piping plover recovery coordinator. I basically help coordinate the rest of the
partners on the whole Great Lakes piping plover program across the whole Great Lakes basin.
My name is Francie Cuthbert and I'm a professor at the University of Minnesota in the Twin
Cities. I've been studying piping plovers in the Great Lakes region since about the
mid-1980s.
My name is Ethan Scott. I am the piping plover crew lead here at Sleeping Bear Dunes National
Lakeshore.
The Great Lakes piping plover is a federally endangered species. Actually one of the most
critically endangered species in the region. Because of that, pretty much all of the actions
involving Great Lakes piping plovers are run through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
We started, when I say we, again I'm talking about myself and graduate students. And we
work very closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Michigan Department of Natural
Resources, and other agencies such as U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, as
well as some of the nonprofits in the state, to promote recovery. So it's a big team effort.
The piping plover recovery program is a major program here at Sleeping Bear Dunes. We have
approximately one third of the nesting piping plovers in the Great Lakes region. The University
of Minnesota runs a bird banding program. It makes our jobs as plover monitors a lot
easier, because we know every breeding adult has an individual identifiable band. So we
know exactly where that bird is from and where there might be nesting now. It also helps
in winter sightings, so we might know where that bird might go
over winter. The chicks all get an individual brood band, so we know what chicks belong
to what brood from year to year. Once they start breeding they get their own individual
bands as well.
We also have international partners. We work with the Canadian Wildlife Service and Ontario,
where we also have breeding Great Lakes piping plovers now. I just want to emphasize how
much cooperation we have from partners throughout the region including, how I mentioned, Great
Lakes tribes. Several different universities, including the University of Minnesota, University
of Michigan, Lake Superior State University, who help with captive rearing, monitoring,
research, things like that. We also have a great network of volunteers who volunteer
across the Great Lakes at different sites, and are an integral part of the program as
well.