American oystercatchers were wiped out in New England, now their numbers are 45% higher along US coasts; here's how

They are the size of a football with bright orange bills, long legs, yellow-beady eyes and can fly up to 2,000 miles. While they populate American beaches today, once there was a time when American oystercatchers had been wiped out from New England.By the turn of the 20th century, these birds had gone extinct in the area due to years of hunting and egg collecting. But now, they are rising in numbers all due to the efforts of the conservationists. As the new chicks are born, a group of biologists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service run behind them to take their body measurements and clip bands onto their legs.“There is a problem. They can fly,” said Alan Kneidel, a senior conservation biologist with the environmental group Manomet Conservation Sciences to the Associated Press, as he watched the team go after two chicks on a Rhode Island beach.

The banding in the 787-acre Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge is a part of a nationwide effort to restore the oystercatcher's population along the coasts of USA.

Raising awareness and money

About $10 million was raised over the past decade through 35 coastal organisations in 16 states, all in an effort to conserve the birds. Much of the campaign is focused on educating beachgoers about the presence of the quirky birds known for their piercing calls and habit of using their razor-sharp bills to crack open oysters and mussels.

Measures were also taken to protect their ground-nesting sites from predators and pets on beaches, sand dunes, salt marshes or tide wrack deposits.Kneidel revealed that a critical part of the conservation was determining that "chick survival is the big thing driving the declines." Then, individually tailored plans were made by organisations in the American Oystercatcher Working Group, which was led by Manomet's Shiloh Schulte, a conservation biologist and field scientist who died in 2025 in a helicopter crash in Alaska while on a mission to protect the shorebirds.

His initial aerial survey showed their numbers had declined by double digits.Different sites have different reasons for decline. While recreational disturbance might be the cause at one site, predators can be the cause at another, while sea level rise and loss of dune structure can be others.Moreover, the birds also benefit from federal protection given to piping plovers, a threatened shorebird that nests in some of the same areas.

During the nesting season of piping plovers, vehicles and dogs are limited or banned near beach nesting sites. “With a little bit of focused effort and attention on this really charismatic bird, you can teach the public how to share the shore,” said Luanne Johnson, a wildlife biologist who founded the nonprofit BiodiversityWorks, one of the groups working on the oystercatcher’s recovery.

The island was the first place to have nesting oystercatchers in Massachusetts when they began to recover and has seen the numbers of breeding pairs increase 77% since 2009.In South Carolina, nearly 30 breeding sites have been roped off to protect nesting habitat. Georgia and North Carolina also rope off breeding sites along with trapping and euthanising predators like foxes, raccoons and coyotes during breeding season.From 2008 to 2023, the number of oystercatchers has increased by 45% along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Their recovery is especially significant, given a 2023 study found that most shorebird populations in North America were declining.

“It’s amazing and it’s a great conservation success story,” said Maureen Durkin, a federal wildlife biologist who led the banding effort and works at the Rhode Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex.Ted Simons, a retired emeritus professor at North Carolina State University who began studying the birds on North Carolina's Outer Banks in 1995, said their recovery was a testament to the species' resilience. He noted American oystercatchers have been found nesting on rooftops in the US and in pastures in Europe.

One pair, he recalled was found nesting in a bus station pothole in Iceland. “If these were really highly specialised birds that needed an exact prescription for survival, that would have been harder,” Simons said.

“But what we found is that these birds are incredibly adaptive.”

A fight for the future

Despite their own resilience and conservation efforts by humans, the threats to American oystercatchers remain. Main among them is climate change, which has led to rising seas and erosion washing out their nests.

This has prompted states such as Georgia to build elevated nesting platforms of oystershells for the birds and use dredged material from shipping channels to create and maintain nesting islands. Along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, Audubon is replenishing shell rakes — beds of old oyster shells where the oystercatchers nest.There are also concerns that changes this month to the Endangered Species Act could impact nesting sites, especially where state protections are weak. Environmental groups, which sued on Tuesday to block the changes, fear that the breeding grounds could be disturbed by them. The changes would allow oil and gas drilling, mining, logging and other developments on critical wildlife habitats as long as the animals aren't killed or injured.

“It’s a direct attack on the protections that have allowed many of these shorebird species to recover,” Kneidel said.