Snowy plovers are returning to the Oregon Coast thanks in part to research done by PSU's Institute for Natural Resources (photo courtesy of Eleanor Gaines)
Snowy plover (photo courtesy of Eleanor Gaines)Snowy plovers look a bit like cotton balls on legs as they scurry along the coastline. The birds build their nests right on the beach making their eggs and hatchlings vulnerable to human activity and predators. Thirty years ago it was hard to spot a snowy plover during a visit to the Oregon coast. Now, thanks to conservation management practices, the fluffy puffballs are returning to the Oregon Coast.
How do we know that the snow plover bounced back from the edge of extinction? We know thanks to the Institute for Natural Resources (INR), a project out of Portland State and Oregon State University that has a mission of providing access to relevant science-based data, tools and information to facilitate the long-term stewardship of Oregon’s environments and natural resources. Through collecting data about rare species in Oregon for more than 30 years, INR’s work has helped policymakers take action to protect Northwest species at risk of extinction.
Eleanor Gaines, director of the Institute for Natural Resources’ Oregon Biodiversity Information Center (photo courtesy of Gaines)“What we're trying to do is save all the parts of Oregon's natural environment,” says Eleanor Gaines, director of the Institute for Natural Resources’ Oregon Biodiversity Information Center. “And we can't do that if we don't know what we've got and where it is and what's in trouble.”
By maintaining the state's most comprehensive database of rare plants and animals,
INR acts as a library or repository that state and federal agencies and other organizations can use to learn about the status of species across the state. This work has led to conservation success stories, identification of areas at risk of losing biodiversity and awareness of the effects of climate change on Oregon species.
Saving snowy plovers
INR has been monitoring the nesting success, survival and productivity of snowy plover along the Oregon coast since 1990. This has involved placing colorful bands on the birds’ legs to track them over time.
“We have this incredible dataset,” Gaines says. “It’s very unusual to have a 30-plus year data set on any species. We’ve been able to publish some papers about their productivity and survival and that helps inform decisions for them across the range.”
Snow plover chicks (photo courtesy of Eleanor Gaines)Snowy plovers can be found from Long Beach, Washington all the way to Mexico. “In most places they really don’t know how the birds are doing,” Gaines says.
The data collected by INR has informed the management practices used by local land management agencies, such as closing areas to recreation while there are nests on the ground or removing predators like crows and ravens.
These management practices have allowed the snowy plover population in Oregon to meet recovery goals, unlike in areas with less coordinated management.
“There's been a lot of management going on, and we have been able to document that Oregon is currently the only recovery unit where the birds are meeting recovery goals,” says Gaines. “When we started the project, there were about 50 snowy plovers on the Oregon coast—the entire coast—and they were just in a handful of areas. Today there are over 700 on the Oregon coast, and they're in every coastal county so that is a huge improvement.”
Mapping biodiversity
By collaborating with the nonprofit NatureServe network, INR is also helping to increase understanding about biodiversity across the country and informing nationwide conservation efforts.
Siuslaw hairy-necked tiger beetle (photo by Ron Lyons)The NatureServe network uses information collected by INR and about 70 other programs to create their Map of Biodiversity Importance, which shows distribution maps for species of serious conservation concern across the United States (and was recently highlighted in the New York Times).
“These species are not just things that are on people’s radar like federally listed species, but also species that people probably aren’t paying much attention to, like mollusks or dragonflies,” says Gaines. “[The map] highlights what is most rare where [and] areas that have good potential for conservation and areas where maybe we’re doing ok.”
In mid-April, Gaines and other INR staff will take Sean O’Brien, CEO of NatureServe, to visit two important biodiversity sites in Oregon. First they will visit the Agate Desert near Medford to see rare plants in bloom, including a species first identified by a former INR staff member. They will then visit Florence where they will talk about snowy plovers, a rare little flower called pink sand verbena and look for an elusive beetle with prominent markings.
pink sand verbena (photo courtesy of Eleanor Gaines)“They have a great name—the Siuslaw hairy-necked tiger beetle—and they’re being considered for federal listing right now, and so our data that we compile here is helping inform that decision,” Gaines says.
During these site visits, O’Brien and INR staff will also talk about their partnership work with state and federal agencies to manage these important habitats. PSU students that are working at INR will come along on the trip and get a chance to be in the field and observe the animals and plants that their number crunching serves.
Monitoring the effects of climate change
Climate change is placing more and more species on the brink of extinction, and INR data are being used by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to monitor the effects of climate change on different species in Oregon.
“We rank all the species in the state to determine how imperiled they are,” says Gaines. “We use the same procedure for everything—plants, animals, fungi—and part of that is addressing climate change vulnerability or how resilient something might be to climate change.”
The poster child for the effects of climate change on species in Oregon is the cute and cuddly American pika, which live at high elevations in the Columbia River Gorge.
American pika (photo by Tim Ulama)“They’re basically running out of space because they need these high elevation slopes, and with warming the appropriate habitat just keeps shrinking,” Gaines says. “They’re going to run out of mountain.”
Also affected by climate change are wolverines.
“We probably have, for the most part, lost wolverines in Oregon,” Gaines says. “I think there’s one in the state that we know about, but they require snowpack and so as snowpack decreases so do wolverines.”
But it is the power of data—of knowing that these species are threatened—that can motivate and inform the actions needed to protect species like pika and wolverines.
Through their contributions to the NatureServe network, INR’s work documenting species in Oregon will be used in the development of the Biden-Harris administration’s “America the Beautiful” conservation initiative.
“We are excited that this work is helping to inform President Biden's America the Beautiful initiative to conserve at least 30 percent of US lands and waters by 2030,” says Gaines.