Piping Plover - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

North Carolina, in 2005-2006, and piping plover activity was concentrated in 12 areas
totaling 2.2 km 2 (Cohen et al. 2008). Noel and Chandler (2008) observed high fidelity of
banded piping plovers to 1 km - 4.5 km sections of beach on Little St. Simons Island,
Georgia.
WM 2.2.1.2 Survival:
The most consistent finding in the various population viability analyses (PVAs)
conducted for piping plovers (Ryan et al. 1993, Melvin and Gibbs 1996, Plissner and
Haig 2000, Wemmer et al. 2001, Larson et al. 2002, Calvert et al. 2006, Brault 2007) is
the sensitivity of extinction risk to even small declines in adult and/or juvenile survival
rates.
Efforts to partition survival within the annual cycle are beginning to receive more
attention, but current information remains limited. Drake et al. (2001) observed no
mortality among 49 radio-marked piping plovers (total of 2,704 transmitter days) in
Texas in 2007-2008. Cohen et al. (2008) documented no mortality of radio-tracked
wintering piping plovers at Oregon Inlet in 2005-2006, but this was based on only seven
individuals. Analysis of South Carolina resighting data for 87 banded piping plovers
(78% Great Lakes breeders) in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 found 100% survival from
December to April 1 (J. Cohen, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, pers.
comm. 2009 ). Noel et al. (2007) inferred two winter (November to February)
mortalities 2 among 21 banded (but not radio-tagged) overwintering piping plovers in
2003-2004 and nine mortalities among 19 overwintering birds during the winter of 2004-
2005 at Little St. Simons Island, Georgia. LeDee (2008) found higher apparent survival 3
rates during breeding and southward migration than during winter and northward
migration for 150 adult (i.e., after-hatch year) Great Lakes piping plovers.
Mark-recapture analysis of resightings of uniquely banded piping plovers from seven
breeding areas by Roche et al. (2009) found that apparent adult survival declined in four
populations and increased in none over the life of the studies 4 . Some evidence of
correlation in year-to-year fluctuations in annual survival of Great Lakes and eastern
Canada populations, both of which winter primarily along the southeastern U.S. Atlantic
1 However, of those birds, one unique and one non-uniquely banded piping plover were seen in the first
winter and were resighted multiple times in the second fall at the same location but were not seen during
the second winter; whether these two birds died in the fall or shifted their wintering location is unknown
(Maddock et al. 2009).
2 Noel et al. (2007) inferred mortality if a uniquely banded piping plover with multiple November to
February sightings on the survey site disappeared during that time and was never observed again in either
its nonbreeding or breeding range. Note that most of these birds were from the Great Lakes breeding
population, where detectability during the breeding season is very high.
3 “Apparent survival” does not account for permanent emigration. If marked individuals leave a survey
site, apparent survival rates will be lower than true survival. If a survey area is sufficiently large, such
that emigration out of the site is unlikely, apparent survival will approach true survival.
4 Data were analyzed for 3-11 years per breeding area, all between 1998 and 2008.
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