Parks Canada protects endangered piping plovers

Parks Canada is undertaking a special project that will take abandoned piping plover eggs from three Maritime national parks and send them to a New Brunswick zoo where they will be sheltered until they are ready for release.

This conservation effort is a part of a plan to rehabilitate the numbers of piping plovers, which are considered to be endangered in eastern Canada. The bird population has dwindled to about 140 birds in New Brunswick.

The small shore birds nest on beaches and are often disturbed by people who also flock to the coast and predators that lurk around the nests.

Parks Canada is now setting up small cameras to monitor the activity around the bird nests and any eggs that have been abandoned in Kouchibouguac, Kejimkujik and Prince Edward Island National Parks will be retrieved and cared for at the Moncton zoo.

Darla Saunders, a scientist at Kouchobouguac National Park in eastern New Brunswick, said she's hoping new conservation efforts will boost the population's numbers.

"What we do is we collect abandoned eggs off of our nests and take them to Magnetic Hill Zoo where they're incubated and once the chicks hatch they're raised at the zoo until they're about two weeks old," Saunders said.

After that the plovers are returned to the park where they learn to fly and forage before being released.

The pen is about 14.6 metres by 14.6 metres and sits on a part of the park's beach that is closed off to the public.

In the pen, the birds will get used to the beach environment and learn on their own how to fly and feed.

Right now there are two chicks in the flight pen at Kouchobouguac.

"We've got one chick that is fully able to fly right now and the other little guy he's starting to stretch his wings and we're hopeful that he's going to be able to take flight too," she said.

Four piping plover chickswere taken to Magnetic Hill Zoo last summer from Prince Edward Island.

The conservation effort is also studying the ability of scientists to raise and release the plover chicks and to raise awareness over the endangered species.