Bird Walk & Hoy Audubon Society Annual Meeting and Program

Meet in front of the nature center near the parking lot at 5:30 PM for a bird walk.
At 7:00 PM, our annual meeting & elections will be held.

Program: “Sharing Our Shore and the Return of the Piping Plover to Waukegan Shores”

Carolyn Lueck is a board member with Lake County Audubon Society and Committee Chair of the Sharing Our Shore – Waukegan initiative. She started monitoring the endangered Great Lakes Piping Plovers in 2023. After spending one morning on the beach monitoring four captive-reared piping plover fledglings that were released on a beach in Waukegan, IL in 2023, she knew her life would never be the same.

Her film “Sharing Our Shore and the Return of the Piping Plover to Waukegan Shores” chronicles the life cycle of Blaze and Pepper, two of the 2023 captive-reared birds that returned in 2024 to successfully fledge three chicks. It also explores the unique partnership between Lake County Audubon and the City of Waukegan, formed to protect not just the Piping Plovers, but also the unique Waukegan dune and lakefront habitats.

Since 1986, when the Great Lakes Piping Plover population was listed as federally endangered, a team of agencies, organizations, and individuals has worked together to bring plovers back from the brink of extinction. Historically, approximately 500 – 800 Piping Plover pairs nested throughout the Great Lakes, but by 1990, this number had declined to about a dozen pairs. They disappeared from Illinois beaches completely by 1955. Several actions on the part of the Great Lakes Piping Plover Conservation Team have contributed to this increase in Piping Plover population size, including frequent nest monitoring, non-breeding-season observers, habitat protection, salvage captive-rearing, predator control, long-term color-banding, and extensive research.

NOTE: Please check back on the day of the event for any updates/cancellations due to weather for the bird hike (strong winds, thunderstorm activity, moderate- heavy rain), etc.

Piping Plover photo credited to Carolyn Lueck