Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore (SBDNL) biologist Erica Adams is living the dream as she monitors the endangered Piping Plover and is a lead on educating the public.
Adams, 29, originally from Rochester Hills, has paved her way through the National Park system at various parks throughout the country, but eventually wound up back in the Sleeping Bear Dunes in 2019.
“You just can’t not love ‘em (Piping Plovers). They have a way of taking over your life and I love it,” Adams said. “They embody the area ... We’re also protecting the integrity of the beaches. We’re giving space to the other native flora and fauna to thrive and to be protected,” she said.
Born and raised in metro Detroit, Adams was a rising senior at Michigan State University and successfully acquired an internship at Sleeping Bear.
After graduating from MSU in 2017 with a wildlife and fisheries degree, Adams had the opportunity to come back to SBDNL the following summer jumping at the opportunity to be on the monitoring team for Piping Plovers.
“That was a great season. It was really wonderful to get that hands-on experience with plover conservation,” she said.
She then left for a year and a half to explore a number of other national parks and national wildlife refuges around the country.
Eventually she climbed the ranks at of the park service and took an opportunity to come back to northern Michigan and the Sleeping Bear Dunes to be the coordinator and crew lead for the Piping Plover project.
“That’s a no brainer. I love this area. I love living here. I love the project and the people that I get to work with are pretty fantastic as well. So it was no-brainer to come back,” Adams said.
Her career traveled through Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in central Florida; Padre Island National Seashore in southern Texas; Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. And since April of 2019, she has been living the dream on the Leelanau Peninsula.
“This is the place for me,” she said. “The internship was definitely a really big help in making those connections with the staff that is up here.”
Adams’ background in education provides her with a special ability to take complex topics and simply convey those topics, ideas, and methods to the public, no matter the age.
“It’s definitely necessary to make strides in the field, but also you have to get people’s engagement in that and their support,” Adams said. “There’s few projects in the National Park Service where you really get to combine the research, the conservation efforts, the outreach and education in such a specific way as we do here. And then working with an endangered species is the best. I couldn’t ask for anything better.”
The majority of the Piping Plover population resides in the southern part of the park, Glen Haven south, where some 80 pairs are located, including 50% of those pairs located on Dimmicks Point on the southeast corner of North Manitou Island. This part of the island represents a quarter of the world’s population nesting during any season.
“Special parts of this program is that we work on the island,” Adams said. “Not a typical setup for a national park to have island components to it. There’s only a couple in the country. It’s a special kind of privilege that we get to go out there ... we have a cycle where seven days a week from basically the start of May to mid August, there’s always staff members out there.”
The park has set up a semipermanent camp structure on the island with heavy duty tents and makeshift kitchen tents that are located on the island all summer long.
“It’s really magical because you wake up in the morning and you walk out and there’s like 30 Piping Plovers right outside your doors. It’s a really pristine wilderness area, and you get to be totally immersed in the job,” she said.
In total, Adams has spent two months on North Manitou Island during her tenure.
On the mainland, signage alerting the public about birds is scattered throughout the park, but the largest populations are located in Glen Haven and Platte Point in Benzie.
SBDNL partners with the University of Minnesota, Detroit Zoo and the Fish and Wildlife Service, along with other organizations and volunteer groups, to name a few.
“We have a wealth of information that we’re able to pull from to be able to make the best decisions and secure the nesting and breeding seasons for the birds,” she said.
The Detroit Zoo helps facilitate the parks captive rearing program where they are able to artificially incubate eggs that would not otherwise survive in the wild, which has been a key success for recovery of the population thanks to the Piping Plover program at SBDNL.
“We’re able to re-release those chicks back into the wild after their fledged date, and then we keep our fingers crossed that they may get back the next year,” Adams said.
The program works as a last resort.
Researchers know their whole life history and where they move and migrate throughout the Great Lakes.
“So they each have a little story attached to them. It makes it hard not to fall in love with them,” Adams said.
The Piping Plover has recovered from roughly 12 pairs in the nineties to 80 pairs as of 2023, which is encouraging for the program, says Adams for the federal endangered species.
“(The Piping Plover) is always going to be a species that’s going to need assistance and management ... there’s really been a big push for … visitors and locals to get behind the birds, both at Sleeping Bear and across the region.” Adams said. “I’m very optimistic about their future and I’m really excited to see where it goes.”
Adams also substitute teaches during her lighter time of the year, but Piping Plovers always remain close to her heart.
