I’m happy to announce that the endangered piping plover shorebirds (Charadrius melodus) have nested for the first time in 49 years in Superior, Wisconsin. This culminates years of habitat restoration work by many groups, including the St. Louis River Alliance, which I worked for in the past. I wrote the first grant to receive funding for this work, but I left the Alliance for my Sea Grant job before I could see the results come to fruition.

I took what I learned through that experience and applied it to my second eco-mystic-romance novel, Plover Landing. The book tells the story of Melora, who is fighting to save the habitat of these birds on the shores of Lake Superior. It was published in 2014.

In Plover Landing, the birds nest on Minnesota Point, but in recent reality, they nested in a bird sanctuary on Wisconsin Point. We’d often had reports of single plovers passing through on migration, but this time, a male and female plover must have been passing through at the same time and decided to make a go of it.

Alas, their nesting efforts were not successful, but natural resource managers hope they might return next spring and try again. Here’s a link to a good Wisconsin Public Radio story about the topic.

I am so excited to see the situation I dreamed of in my novel burst into reality! And I’m happy that these adorable birds are making a comeback.

If you’re interested in my books, please check out my Books page. And if you live in the Twin Ports, be sure to visit my booth at Chester Bowl Fall Fest in Duluth on September 19^th. I’ll be selling and autographing books along with local poet Stanley Kusunoki.