Birds Australia (BirdLife Partner) has won the ‘Natural Environment’ category of the Victorian Coastal Awards for its Beach Nesting Birds project, which has recruited local communities and land managers to improve the breeding success of the Near Threatened Hooded Plover Thinornis rubricollis.
The Awards recognise individuals, community groups, committees of management, projects and businesses that have demonstrated a commitment to protecting and enhancing Victoria’s coastal or marine environments.
Endemic to Australia, the Hooded Plover acts as a flagship for serious coastal issues. “Hoodies are an excellent indicator of healthy beaches where recreation is balanced with coastal needs”, said Dr Grainne Maguire – Beach-nesting Birds Project Manager.
Before the Beach Nesting Birds (BNB) project was set up, annual surveys in Victoria showed that young birds only accounted for a small proportion of the population, suggesting that the greatest threat to this species is low breeding success. Unfortunately, the species’s breeding season coincides with the peak in the summer holiday season, when human presence on beaches is at its highest.
“Continued poor breeding success would mean we lose this species in the future”, said Dr Maguire. “We are turning this around by empowering community groups through the BNB project to monitor breeding, and to recognise threats and manage them.”
She says beach-nesting birds would stand no hope if it were down to a handful of people working to recover their population. “They rely on an integrated and broad scale effort in Victoria, inclusive of all coastal residents, beach goers and land managers, to make a difference.”
