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Staff photo: Trina Berlo Wasaga Sun

Minister of Natural Resources Donna Cansfield watches Piping Plovers nesting at Wasaga Beach Provincial Park Beach Area One Friday after a press conference when she announced funding for their protection.

Piping Plovers get provincial funding

BY Trina Berlo, staff June 30, 2009 12:06

Ontario's Natural Resources Minister Donna Cansfield visited Wasaga Beach Friday to make a $300,000 funding announcement for species at risk.

With Wasaga Beach's Piping Plovers nesting in the background, Cansfield announced that 11 projects in southern Georgian Bay and Lake Huron would receive funding as part of a $4-million injection for 118 projects province-wide through the Species at Risk Stewardship Fund.

Cansfield said there are 180 species at risk in Ontario, 80 per cent of which are in southern Ontario.

"The Piping Plover is one of the rarest species at risk and Wasaga Beach is only one of three sites in Ontario's great lakes where the Piping Plovers are nesting," said Cansfield.

Through the Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation, the Piping Plover program will receive $46,761 to develop a shoreline stewardship guide and support the many volunteers that monitor the restricted areas where the endangered birds nest.

The aptly named guardians are watching over two pair of Piping Plovers nesting at Wasaga Beach Provincial Park's main beach. Three pair are nesting at Sauble Beach.

When Piping Plovers successfully nested at Sauble Beach in 2007, it marked the first time the birds had nested on the great lakes in 30 years.

Species at risk biologist Jodi Benvenuti who is working on the funding application for the Piping Plovers said it is not known exactly how much money will be filtered to Wasaga Beach.

She said locally, money will be used to pay for some of the expenses associated with monitoring the Piping Plovers and will be used to pay the salary of the person who has been hired to coordinate the 60 volunteers that watch over the birds.

Guardian Jack Seigel and his wife Connie Cochrane spoke on behalf of the guardians.

"They are entitled to be here. They have a right to be here as a species and we have to learn to share the beach," said Seigel. "When the plovers first started looking at the beach it was hoped that they would nest down at the far end away from the human activity but they have it in their minds that this is the best place and I think the reason is they are here to be next to people because if this project is successful, which I think it will be, and then as [the population increase] this can stand as a model for the fact that we need to share this world. If we share the beach, they will survive."

The Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority will receive $23,708 to help identify critical lake sturgeon spawning habits in the Nottawasaga River, determine spawning population status, raise public awareness and educate landowners about their role in protecting sturgeon populations and habitat.

"Next week is the first anniversary of Ontario's Endangered Species Act and this is an interesting Act because it makes us a leader in North America for the protection of endangered species," said Cansfield.

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