Good News: Plovers in a dangerous time

Jordan Heath-Rawlings When we interview reporters from the Narwhal, a team of investigative journalists that primarily cover climate issues, it’s often bad news, which is unfortunate, yes, because they’re wonderful people and great journalists and they deserve joy, but also because what they really cover at the Narwhal is the natural world. And the natural world is amazing and wonderful, mysterious and beautiful as deserving of good news as much as anything else on the planet. And if you don’t believe me, give us the next 20 minutes or so to show you that nature is beautiful with a story of birth and death, love and scandal. Danger and redemption. This story is proof that as they say, true plove conquers all.

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is Good News Week here on the Big Story. And today: Plovers in a Dangerous Time. Fatima Syed, one of our favorite guests, is an Ontario reporter for the Narwhal. So by necessity, she hears a lot of bad climate news, but this is not an episode about that. Is it Fatima?

Fatima Syed It’s about a love story on a beach,

Jordan Heath-Rawlings An Ontario beach even.

Fatima Syed I know. Shocking, right?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Tell us about to begin, for those who aren’t bird watchers, I guess piping plovers, what are they?

Fatima Syed Okay, so to be clear, I have also, not a bird watcher, but my best friend and colleague, Emma Macintosh is a bird watcher. So I feel a lot of pressure to do this properly. Okay. Plovers are incredible. Again, I’m not a bird person, but I saw a plover in real life for the first time, actually this summer got in my car, I drove to Wasega Beach, which for those of you don’t know, is the longest freshwater beach in Ontario. And that’s the home of Plovers in this province. They’re always there every summer. And this year, because I was tracking the story that we’re about to talk about, there are all these people that track them, and one of them texted me saying, there is a nest of plover eggs on Wasega Beach. Do you want me to tell you what they hatched? And I was like, yes, obviously.

And so they told me when they hatched, and two days later I was in my car, drove to Wasega Beach to go and see them for the first time. They are so small. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’re going to miss them. They’re the color of sand. They camouflage so well, but they have orange beaks and orange legs and they just literally bounce around the beach like popcorn. The babies are fluffy, so they actually look like popcorn. That’s the best metaphor for them. And their parents are just very elegant birds that are so fast, like blink, and you miss them, and they’re just chirping all across the beach. Tiny, tiny birds literally scurrying in between human legs, like people are sunbathing. They’re building sandcastles. And you see these plovers just popping up next to them and then in a second popping away. They’re really fun, really fun birds. They

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Sounds lovely. This is the one bad question, I guess I will ask. How are they doing? Are they endangered?

Fatima Syed They are endangered. They’re deeply, deeply endangered.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings We wouldn’t be having this conversation if they weren’t.

Fatima Syed Listen, I’m a climate reporter on a podcast talking about birds. I’m not talking about birds that are everywhere. These are birds that actually disappeared for many years in Ontario. So by the 1960s, they vanished from the Great Lakes region, and in 1977, they were declared endangered across Canada, not just in Ontario. That was 1977 was the last time we actually saw a plover pair in this province. We thought they were extinct. By 1986, everyone thought we had killed them. They had just died. And this is where we get into the good news. We started preserving our beaches. We started thinking about how to share a beach with animals. And miraculously, in 2007, the Plovers came back to Ontario. They actually came to BLE Beach, which is on the opposite end of Wasega Beach. And there was a pair there. Everyone was really excited. That was the year Harry Potter came out. Blast one. That was the year Rihanna wrote Umbrella. And that was the year the iPhone first came out, the first ever iPhone. And that was the year the Plovers returned to Ontario.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And it’s all been downhill from there.

Fatima Syed Actually, no, it’s been uphill.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Oh, good.

Fatima Syed Because they’ve been coming back regularly since 2007. There was only one year where we didn’t really have any babies, but ever since 2007, we’ve had plovers on our beaches. Again, there’s not that many, but they’re there.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And this is where we get to the fun, exciting, happy part of it, I guess, or at least we start the love story. So tell us about Flash and Peppa and what happened to them.

Fatima Syed Okay, so I have to set the scene right. This is going to be a story about a summer romance on the beach, but it starts with a suspected murder and includes a cheating scandal. So the story starts with flash. Flash is this really wonderful four-year-old plover who’s come to Ontario every year since he has existed in this world. He’s small, he’s quirky, he’s fluffy, he’s adorable. And his partner is a plover named Peppa who’s 10 years old. Now, plovers always exist in pairs and for some reason a lot of male plovers are with cougar pulp Plovers. I don’t understand the dynamic here, and I think psychologists need to study the spur population

Jordan Heath-Rawlings In praise of older plovers.

Fatima Syed Exactly. So Peppa and Flash have been together for a couple years, and they always come to the same beach in Ontario and they’re just chilling. This summer, they were longtime partners that split their time between Florida and Ontario. But this summer flash disappeared. Now every plover is actually tracked. So we have wonderful plover caretakers, we call them plover lovers in Ontario, who actually put a little band around their tiny legs so we can track them and make sure they’re doing okay. So when they fly back to Florida or Mexico, when they go south, we know where they are and when they come back, we know where they are and we also know how to identify them. So we found out that Flash died. Oh no, he was killed. We suspect from a very giant bird. It happens sometimes because we can’t really protect tiny, tiny animals all the time. And when Flash died, Peppo is really sad because plovers don’t like to exist by themselves. They need to be in pears. So Peppo was really sad, didn’t know what to do. So she decided she was going to go check out another beach and try and find a friend for the summer, someone to spend time with in the sun, on the sand, a rebound, or maybe a new love. Peppa is 10 years old, she, she’s a woman who knows what she wants.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings But what happened when Peppa left to their nest?

Fatima Syed I’m so glad you asked. Flash and Peppa had a nest of four eggs, and when Peppa was heartbroken, she kind of just abandoned those eggs. She just left because she was so heartbroken and so alone, her priorities were finding someone and she just left her babies.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings That’s cold.

Fatima Syed Plover females can be a little cold. The men really have to prove themselves to get their attention, so it’s not uncharacteristic of them. The great thing is that that nest was actually found by humans, by people who are sort of watching closely, and they were able to quickly get those eggs and save them.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Well, let’s talk about that first before we get to the summer romance. It kind of happens in two parts, right? So what do you do when you find plover eggs that have been abandoned? How do you save them?

Fatima Syed What do you do? The logical, if I had found plover eggs, I’d be like, I guess I’m going to take them home and wait until they hatch. Except plovers are so tiny and so delicate and they’re endangered. You have to take a series of precautionary steps. The one thing to know about this entire story is that there’s only one facility in the entire world that knows how to take care of plovers. And that facility is in Michigan at the University of Michigan. It’s managed by the Detroit Zoo, so from the Georgian Bay area where the Wasega Beach and Sabo Beach and Tiny Beach, which is where Peppa and Flash were. From there, it’s like a six hour drive, maybe a little more with traffic and border control to get to Michigan. So that facility was set up in 1992. It’s as old as I am.

And this year we’ve taken a lot of eggs from Ontario there, including pepper’s. Nest humans collected them and they carefully transported them with the help of Environment Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Environment. And just like careful scientists from Toronto Zoo, they put them in a little box surrounded by cotton balls, and they turned their safe, strapped to the passenger seat, filed all the permits that they’re carrying special cargo, went through the special line where you’re carrying special cargo and took it to the facility. And when they took the eggs there, one of them actually hatched, and it’s flash and pepper’s child. It’s a tiny fuzzy cotton ball named Woody after the beach where his nest was found. And he’s doing great. He’s out in the wild now somewhere, chilling in America.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Tell me a little bit more about this facility, because I understand it’s kind of rare.

Fatima Syed It’s very rare. And what’s more rare is the fact that Ontario and Michigan are working together because cross-border conservation programs are very rare because even though you’d think that they’d be more common because animals don’t recognize borders, birds like the plovers fly between Mexico, Canada, and America through summer, they don’t see geographical boundaries. So why when we think about conservation efforts, but they’re rare because there’s a lot of bureaucracy involved. Endangered species laws in America are very different from endangered species law in Canada, let alone in Ontario. So you have to somehow deal with multiple levels of government, multiple kinds of laws and multiple different approaches of how to protect these animals. What’s interesting here is that during the pandemic, all the bodies actually were able to come together, which is really cool. They’ve been collaborating loosely for 15 years. But during the pandemic, they started having weekly summer zoom calls, just monitoring things on everyone’s side.

Because with the pandemic, you had to take extra precaution, make sure there was no human to human interaction, and also make sure that you don’t want to spread covid to the animals somehow because it was also unknown. So because they started talking when Peppa and Flashes nest was found, all the relationships existed. So suddenly you knew exactly who to call in America, and you knew exactly what needed to be done to make this transportation happen. Logistically, the challenge that would’ve been there before the pandemic suddenly wasn’t because there had been so many conversation about legislation and rules and border control that there was somehow a sort of streamlined process to make it all happen, and it was a perfect opportunity to test it out, kind of like the stars aligning and the summer love becoming the perfect summer success story for environmental conservation.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I really appreciate the links. You’re going to sell this as a good news story right now.

Fatima Syed But it is actually, I can tell you when I heard about the story, the fact that America and Canada would work together and save a really, really tiny bird is actually incredible. It’s mind boggling and unbelievable, but it happened and it’s so cool.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Amazing. So now we get to the fling. I don’t know if we can call it a fling, but it’s summer love.

Fatima Syed We get to the cheating scandal, Jordan.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Okay, first the cheating scandal. Fatima, tell me what happened next to our heroine.

Fatima Syed So Peppa is flying off in search of a new partner in search of a new fling. She needs someone to spend the summer with, so we’re going to imagine her flying off, right? Searching for it. I want to introduce everyone to Nancy. Nancy’s a 12-year-old plover who’d spent the spring falling in love with a plover named Gotawsi. Gatowsi is two years old. Nancy is 12 years old, significant age difference, but Nancy knows what she wants and Gatowsi is trying to prove himself to the females.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings May. December is a really popular movie right now.

Fatima Syed Gatowsi name also means sixth in Anishinabe because he was the sixth bird to migrate back from New York last year to Ontario. So I thought that was very poetic. There’s lots of layers of loveliness to this story. So Nancy and Gatowsi are on their honeymoon at Wasaga. They’ve created their own nest of four eggs and they’re just chilling. And suddenly who arrives? But Peppa, and this is where the love story becomes an epic Greek drama, because Peppa is actually Gatowsi’s mother.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Oh boy.

Fatima Syed But human rules don’t apply in the animal kingdom, right, Jordan? We know this. Animals are a bit stranger, and when you have an endangered population, you have limited options on who you can hang out with. Okay?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You’ve got to get it where you can.

Fatima Syed Exactly. So in Gotawsi, Peppa found her summer companion. The two were spotted, mating or copulating as the official term is in secret, and they created their own nest of eggs. Poor Nancy, when she found out she was heartbroken and she actually left Aui and her eggs, wow. So another nest of eggs,

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Another plover leaves a whole nest of eggs. Why do I feel like the poor eggs and chicks are much like in any real human relationship, drama, it is always the children who suffer.

Fatima Syed The kids are not all right, it’s always the case. But luckily we’ll get to the eggs. Maybe Gutowski felt guilty. Maybe Nancy was actually the one for him, and he realized after he was with Peppa, maybe he was both. We never know what spurs men to make the decisions that they do, but Gutow actually wooed Nancy back with a very sincere and powerful mating dance, which is how Plovers fall in love. And he left Peppa and went back to Nancy, and Nancy accepted his apology and Peppa being abandoned twice that summer just disappeared, and she hasn’t been seen since. We hope she’s okay, but she went through a lot this summer. The poor girl,

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I hope she’s down south somewhere nice and warm and not even thinking about these other plovers.

Fatima Syed So the ending of Plove Island, of course includes,

Jordan Heath-Rawlings That’s what they called it?

Fatima Syed That’s what we all called it, plum Island.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And there were people, just to be clear, there were people, as you mentioned, these birds are tracked. Lots of people care about them. There are people like following the saga as it unfolds, right? It’s a weekly drama.

Fatima Syed There were Instagram posts, there was podcast episodes. People are invested in this love triangle. Everyone wants to know what happens yet next. It was the summer of Barbie Heimer. So obviously everyone called Peppa the Barbie because she is the main character of the story, and we all wanted to know how that Barbie story ended and she disappeared. So we don’t even know.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I’m amazed that you didn’t call it the summer of Plove.

Fatima Syed I was going to do it at the end. I was going to say it was the summer of Plove.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What a story

Fatima Syed Peppa did what she had to do.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings But now there are two nests, right? Two more nests in addition to the first nest that we’ve already discussed that got taken to that facility.

Fatima Syed Look, I love rom-coms, and I love, love stories, and I always want that happy ending. That’s what we watch romcoms for. We want that epic magical ending and Nancy and Gutowski getting together. It’s kind of that. But this love story is ending. The magic is in the fact that no egg was lost because these eggs are so delicate. You have to imagine how small they are. They’re in the sand.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Give me something to compare them to so people who are listening can get a picture in their mind. Are we talking like Cadbury mini eggs or what?

Fatima Syed Like Cadbury mini eggs. Imagine four of them in the palm of your hand. That’s how big the nest is. And now imagine vultures and eagles and other giant birds circulating around the beaches. Imagine humans just walking without looking at the sand. Imagine the wind blowing and toppling like bushes and leaves and twigs. Imagine the water washing up from the beach and submerging that coastline. These eggs are sort of at the risk and mercy of nature around them. And for them to survive, they need their parents. The father, the Plover dad plays a very important role in taking care of them and making sure that they’re protected and from animals and humans alike. The plover mom, as we’ve learned, doesn’t really care. She sort of does her business, lays the eggs, and then, okay, it’s up to you now. And at some point, she actually migrates first, and it’s the father’s job to bring the babies with him afterwards. So they need their dad. And in both cases, the dads were preoccupied with other things

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Or dead.

Fatima Syed Or in the case of flash, unfortunately dead, luckily humans to the rescue, which how often can I say that? Yes, humans came, saw both eggs, spotted them very quickly, scooped them up, put them in the proper containers, made sure they were okay, transported them to Michigan to the facility, and no, again, no viable egg. Obviously there are eggs that won’t get hatched because some eggs don’t have babies in them, but no viable egg. No egg that could have birthed a plover baby was lost.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings So you have this incredible drama, which surely entertained many and is probably entertaining more right now, at least I hope so. And at the end of it, we’ve lost one plover in flash, but how many have we gained?

Fatima Syed The last time that I checked, I knew that Woody was out in the world and there was at least one more bird that had been hatched, and the others were all safe and secure and being incubated until they could come out.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings That’s so nice when things don’t end in tragedy for an endangered species. And I know that you guys, the narwhal deal with a lot of depressing news. I mean, we talk to you about depressing news all the time. It must’ve been really nice to spend a couple of weeks on this story driving to the beach to see little cute balls of popcorn.

Fatima Syed Yeah, look at the time that this happened, the green belt scandal was full underway. There were things happening in Ontario that we now understand, but in the summer, we were sort of banging our heads against the wall trying to figure it all out. So sometimes a romantic scandal on the beach is actually a good thing for an endangered species like who knew? And it’s really nice to, the one thing that I’ve learned time and time again this year is that there are a lot of people in Ontario in the world actually, who are spending a lot of their time taking care of nature, and we don’t always get to document the impacts of their efforts. In this case, we were right. This was a collaboration of local bird watchers, conservationists, government officials, scientists, even border control, right? We were lucky to capture this. We were lucky to capture the efforts of humans in that fought tooth and nail with every democratic lever they had available to them to try and get the green belt decision reversed, who are still monitoring the impacts of the Ford government’s housing decisions and other decisions that have environmental impacts.

But there are so many humans that email us every day that aren’t experts, but just care so passionately about nature. Some of the recent stories from my BC colleagues includes heading into an ancient forest with a researcher who has just dedicated his life to studying trees and helping people protect them, and then actually doing it. There’s another story of protecting an endangered bird in BC and how when you protect that bird, you actually end up saving a tree that they live in that was also endangered. And sort of the weird interrelationships that nature’s has. Those stories exist, and as climate reporters, obviously we need to do more to find them and to highlight how, not just our intentions, but our actions can result in positive change that we don’t see. And I think this story was so special because it was just so perfect. It had everything, plovers in dangerous times, right?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You stole my episode title.

Fatima Syed Hey, I had it first.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Aslright fair enough. Fatima, it is always a delight to speak to you, and of course, thank you for sharing this story with us, but also you and your colleague, Emma, all your colleagues at the Narwhal, thank you for bringing us these important climate stories and especially thank you for not making all of them sad.

Fatima Syed We really try to find the magic, and thank goodness for plovers because they really came through.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Amazing. Have a lovely end of your year, and I’m sure that we here at the Big Story will talk to you in the new year.

Fatima Syed See you in 2024.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Fatima Syed of the Narwhal, who I’m sure we will speak to again soon, though, probably not for anything this whimsical. That was the big story. For more head to thebigstorypodcast.ca for a little bit of good news and a whole lot of bad news. More than 1500 episodes I believe are there by now. You can offer us some feedback anytime you want to. The way to get in touch with us is on Twitter at the Big Story fpn through email. Hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca or by calling 4 1 6 9 3 5 5 9 3 5. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk tomorrow.

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