Sierra Club Applauds Canceling Of Sandy Hook Concerts For Plovers

HIGHLANDS, NJ — There's at least one group cheering the National Park Service's controversial decision to stop offering free concerts at Sandy Hook this summer, due to the discovery of piping plover nests: The New Jersey Sierra Club.

“Piping plovers are a very unique, endangered species and they have to be protected. Cancelling the Sandy Hook concert series will help assure that piping plover nests at Sandy Hook will not be damaged," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "The concerts would bring in lots of people who could trample on the nests. The noise also scares the birds and can disrupt the nesting. The National Park Service and the Sandy Hook Foundation made the right call by cancelling the concerts."

Piping plover birds are not technically endangered; they are listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

As Patch was the first to report Thursday, the National Park Service made the last-minute decision just this week to cancel its tremendously popular free summer concert series. All the bands had already been booked through August.

This was due to the discovery of a single piping plover nest near the concert site, Lot E, on June 3. Federal law states that humans on a beach cannot come within 1,000 meters (3,200 feet) of nesting plovers. The Sandy Hook Foundation, which organizes the concerts, said that after that Lot E nest was found, they searched "everywhere" for another site in the park to host the concerts.

"But every beach (on Sandy Hook) has a plover nest near it," said Jane Preziosi, the office manager of the Sandy Hook Foundation. "And other sites didn't work because we need parking space."

There are 22 piping plovers nests total at Sandy Hook right now. Dunes are their favorite spot to nest.

Tittel even went one step further, saying that the National Park Service should have been aware of the plovers beforehand, and stopped running the concerts last summer, or even earlier.

“They should have looked in the area before deciding to have the concerts there. If the piping plovers are there now, they were most likely there last year as well," said Tittel.

There are currently about 1,879 breeding pairs of piping plover along the East Coast Atlantic Seaboard, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That's a number Fish & Wildlife calls "perilously low," according to Meagan Racey, public affairs specialist with the Northeast Region of Fish & Wildlife.

"Each bird makes a difference toward recovery and removal of federal (Endangered Species Act) protections," said Racey.

Piping plovers have suffered a significant loss of habitat in recent years, not because of humans literally stepping on their nests, but because of beachfront development. Piping plovers usually nest right in the dunes, usually prime real estate for beachfront hotels and houses. Today, many towns in New Jersey and elsewhere have now restricted the amount of beachfront development that can occur, and many towns specifically prohibit building in dunes, mainly for coastal erosion reasons.

More than 40 percent of all the piping plovers in New Jersey are born at Sandy Hook. The bird usually only stays there for a few short months to nest and have hatchlings. It then flies away.

"The piping plover needs special protections, and cancelling the concert series will help preserve the future of these special shorebirds,” continued Tittel. “They can move the concerts to other parts of the park or other locations. We need to protect this endangered bird’s nests wherever they are found.”

The concerts were given every Wednesday night of summer at Lot E, and usually about 3,000 people attended. They were also free.

"We're horribly upset about this, too," Preziosi of the Sandy Hook Foundation told Patch Thursday. She sounded upset in the phone interview. "It's horrible. The park and the Foundation really tried everywhere to find a place for the concerts. People say the parade grounds, but there's no parking there. We need a space to park 3,000 cars."

Related: Sandy Hook Cancels All Its Summer Concerts Due To Piping Plover