Seniors face off with plovers for beach space; state wildlife offer solution

By Barbara Taormina

The Metropolitan Beaches Commission, which oversees Greater Boston’s 15 public beaches, including Revere Beach, met this week with a room full of residents who have had it with the Piping Plover.

The small, puffy, brown and white beach birds are back nesting on beaches that line the North Shore. The plovers, which feed on insects that live on the beach, making it more hospitable for people, are listed as threatened or endangered by federal and state wildlife agencies. As a result, the Mass. Fish and Game Department fences off large sections of the beaches to protect the plovers during nesting season, which runs from late spring to July or August.

The plover population is rebounding, but the Revere population is tired of the birds taking over the beach. Mike Savio, of the Tenant’s Association at Jack Satter House, said he and the tenants support protecting the birds. “But if this is an inconvenience for seniors, if the placement of nests is where seniors want to be, it’s a problem,” Savio told the Commission.

Savio said that every year there is a family movie night on the beach across from Jack Satter House. But this year, the plovers are interfering by nesting on the spot where organizers erect a movie screen.

Savio asked who decides where the plover nests are placed. Former Fish and Game Commissioner George Peterson said wildlife agencies don’t choose where to put the nests. “The birds decide that,” he told the crowd.

But Peterson had some good news for residents who feel they are being displaced by the plovers. Massachusetts has done such a good job helping the plover population recover, the state can now develop a plan that allows for more flexibility in developing strategies to protect them. For example, conservationists have been fencing off 50 yards of beach around a nest to protect the birds. Peterson said that under the plan, those safe zones could be reduced to 50 feet, returning the remaining beach to residents.

Peterson said state and federal wildlife officials are working to ensure residents have access to the beach. “You all deserve that,” he told residents from Revere and Winthrop who turned out for the meeting.

The final details of the plover plan are still being worked out. Peterson said the final decision rests with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the region’s congressional delegation and local officials are working to move the plan along.