SANIBEL, FLa. — Nearly two years ago Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida, and that forced the City of Sanibel to do a major beach renourishment project.
Unfortunately, that beach renourishment project negatively affected our nesting sea turtles and now we are learning it negatively affected our nesting shore birds as well.
“This year is actually our first year on record since we started our shore bird monitoring program in 2002,” said Audrey Albrecht, a shorebird biologist with the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation. “It’s our first year on record with no shorebirds fledging off of Sanibel or Captiva.”
Albrecht says the beach renourishment changed the natural habitat for birds like our Snowy Plovers.
“Normally, they need a lot of camouflage,” said Albrecht. “So, shells, grass, debris, and plants for their chicks to hide under. They need to camouflage their nests for their chicks and themselves from predators.”
And while the beach was being covered by trucked in sand, that camouflage was lost was also home to food for the plovers.
“Invertebrates that they need, so insects and marine invertebrates, they are not available to eat when there not place for them either.”
Despite this, Albrecht is not discouraged for next year’s next season.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean the birds are gone or anything like that, but they chosing to nest elsewhere; which is pretty unusual since they have pretty decent site fidelity,” said Albrecht.
When the birds return next year, the beach will likely look more natural as we already are starting to see the mixing of the local and renourished sand.
“It looks like after the last few storms the sand is kind of mixing, so that more natural sand and shells and these rack lines, that rack line of old seaweed from high tide, that is more suitable habitat for the plovers,” said Albrecht.
And while the news was sour for the Sanibel beaches, the Sanibel Causeway did see its first Least Terns fledge in 30 years.
“The Least Terns and Black Skimmers did try to nest there for about 30 years. They were very unsuccessful. They were often run over or washed off by heavy rain.”
Despite the ongoing construction, birds were given their space and were successful.
As we transition from nesting season to migration season, Albrecht says it is important to give our birds their space as some of them have traveled thousands of miles to arrive in Southwest Florida.
