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Community Corner

Snowy Plover Population on San Mateo Beaches Unchanged from Last Year

It happens every January—searching local beaches for very small, hard-to-find shorebirds.

 

Every January, volunteers and biologists conduct surveys on beaches along the West Coast in an effort to estimate how many snowy plovers are wintering on the coast. The Pacific population of the Western Snowy Plover is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and the plover count is an important step in assessing trends in the population and evaluating efforts to protect it.

On Tuesday this week, 19 California State Park volunteers surveyed beaches from Año Nuevo to Pacifica for the plovers. There were 98 plovers found in all—exactly the number found on the beaches in the . The plover numbers for different beaches varied from the previous year, however, and Pacifica State Beach (Linda Mar) was host to one more than last year. 

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