![]() ![]() Had the spill happened there, what then?īut snowy plovers can be troubled not just by pollution, but by our mere presence: by development and general beach use, and now, around the Gulf, by spill mitigation efforts. Fortunately, about 60 percent of nesting pairs use beaches along a 60-mile stretch of southernmost Texas, which didn’t see any oil. Around the Gulf, the population is larger, but still declining slightly. Along the Pacific, the Western snowy plover, a subspecies, is threatened under the Endangered Species Act. They exist only where there’s suitable habitat: beaches and flats that allow these quick striders, and their mottled eggs, to blend in. ![]() Though snowy plovers are found not just in the Americas, but also in the Old World, the U.S. It’s a bird that weighs just two ounces as an adult, while an estimated 170 million gallons of crude gushed from the Deep Horizon well. What could be a greater contrast to last year’s massive, devastating oil spill than a snowy plover, no bigger than a fist, skittering hither and thither along a Gulf Coast beach.
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