On a sun-dappled, untouched Rhode Island beach where seabirds call constantly over the sound of rolling waves, a team of conservation biologists crept quietly across warm sand in mid-June 2026, their nets ready to capture two young American oystercatchers at the Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge in South Kingstown.
The chase nearly ended before it began: one chick, already the size of a football with the species’ signature bright-orange bill and long pale legs, bolted into the adjacent coastal salt pond, while the other burst into a short, awkward flight, sending the entire team sprinting across the refuge’s 2.4-kilometer shoreline. Senior conservation biologist Alan Kneidel, who works with Manomet Conservation Sciences, laughed as he watched the pursuit, noting a simple, unexpected hurdle: “There is a problem. They can fly.”
After a determined hunt, biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service secured both chicks, tucking each gently into soft white pillowcases to carry them to a sheltered sand dune. There, the team took detailed body measurements and clipped identifying metal bands to the birds’ peach-colored legs, part of a decades-long, cross-continental initiative to rebuild the American oystercatcher population across the coasts of the Americas.
Once nearly eradicated from New England by the early 1900s due to unregulated hunting and widespread egg collection, the distinctive shorebirds are now staging a remarkable comeback. Over 10 years, the collaborative recovery campaign raised $10 million and brought together 35 coastal conservation organizations across 16 U.S. states to address the species’ unique needs.
Much of the work has focused on public outreach, educating beachgoers about the quirky, charismatic birds—known for their piercing, sharp calls and the ability to use their razor-edged bills to pry open oysters and mussels. Teams have also implemented targeted protections for the birds’ ground-level nesting sites, which are typically located on beaches, sand dunes, salt marshes, and tide wrack deposits, shielding nests from predators and off-leash pets that frequently disturb breeding areas.
The effort has delivered impressive results: between 2008 and 2023, the American oystercatcher population along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts grew by 45%. This recovery stands out as a rare conservation win, as a 2023 study found that the vast majority of North American shorebird populations are still in steady decline.
“It’s amazing and it’s a great conservation success story,” said Maureen Durkin, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist based at the Rhode Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex, who led the June banding effort. “It does really demonstrate how much you can accomplish when there is a dedicated group of partners that can come together, identify the needs of the species and implement conservation actions. It also shows that conserving imperiled species is not easy and takes a sustained and committed effort.”
Kneidel explained that the campaign’s success grew from a key insight: researchers identified low chick survival as the primary driver of the species’ historic population decline. The work was spearheaded by Shiloh Schulte, a conservation biologist with the American Oystercatcher Working Group who died last year in a helicopter crash while conducting shorebird conservation research in Alaska. Schulte’s initial aerial surveys confirmed the species had experienced double-digit population declines, laying the groundwork for the targeted recovery strategy. Because threats vary widely across breeding sites, the working group developed customized plans for each region.
“At one site, it might be recreational disturbance, at another site it might be predators, at another site it might be sea level rise or loss of dune structure that’s causing overwash events that are causing nest failure,” Kneidel explained during a walk along nearby Moonstone Beach, where flocks of squeaking least terns wheeled overhead.
On Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard, for example, teams install seasonal low fencing made of chicken wire at the entrance to key oystercatcher breeding grounds to keep egg-eating skunks and raccoons off the beach, while colorful educational signs teach visitors to avoid disturbing nesting areas. The island hosted the first documented returning nesting oystercatchers in Massachusetts as the species began to recover, and breeding pairs there have increased by 77% since 2009.
The birds have also benefited from existing protections for piping plovers, a threatened shorebird that shares the same coastal nesting habitat. During plover nesting season, vehicle access and dog activity are restricted or banned entirely near nesting sites, creating a safe buffer that also protects oystercatcher nests.
“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, founder of the conservation nonprofit BiodiversityWorks, a key partner in the recovery effort.
Further down the Atlantic coast, South Carolina has roped off nearly 30 dedicated breeding sites to protect nesting habitat. Georgia and North Carolina use similar roped-off protections, and also trap and remove invasive predators such as foxes, raccoons and coyotes during breeding season. North Carolina’s breeding population has grown by nearly 20% to 402 pairs, and some long-bandled individual birds have even become local minor celebrities among birdwatchers.
Lindsay Addison, a coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina, noted the project proves the value of proactive conservation: “If you focus conservation efforts on a species, especially before it becomes endangered to the point that you’re considering listing, you can actually sort of head off trouble at the pass.”
Retired North Carolina State University emeritus professor Ted Simons, who began studying oystercatchers on the state’s Outer Banks in 1995, said the recovery is also a testament to the species’ own remarkable adaptability. Oystercatchers have been documented nesting on urban rooftops in the U.S., while related species in Europe nest in farm pastures and feed on worms, and one pair even nested in a bus station pothole in Iceland.
“If these were really highly specialized 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.”
Despite the impressive progress, major threats to the species’ long-term survival remain. The most pressing challenge is climate change, which is driving sea level rise and coastal erosion that frequently flood and wash out oystercatcher ground nests. To counter this, coastal states have implemented creative solutions: Georgia has built elevated nesting platforms made of oyster shells, and uses dredged material from shipping channels to create and maintain new nesting islands, while Audubon North Carolina is replenishing shell rakes—old oyster shell beds that are the birds’ preferred nesting habitat—along the Cape Fear River.
“Climate change, sea level rise, it’s a big challenge not only for oystercatchers but for all kinds of interests on the coast,” Addison said. “There’s going to be loss of habitat due to sea level rise so we have to make sure that we do what we can to provide the habitat that we can so they can get through this next bottleneck.”
A second, more immediate threat has emerged from recent changes to the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which environmental groups say could weaken habitat protections, particularly in states with limited local safeguards. The new rules allow oil and gas drilling, mining, logging and other development in critical wildlife habitats as long as individual animals are not directly killed or injured. Environmental organizations filed a lawsuit June 2026 to block the changes, warning that the policy will open the door to widespread habitat destruction that could push already vulnerable species to extinction.
“It’s a direct attack on the protections that have allowed many of these shorebird species to recover,” Kneidel said.
This reporting is part of the Associated Press’ ongoing climate and environmental coverage, which receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP maintains full editorial control over all content, with public standards for philanthropic partnership available on AP.org.
