Mountain plovers, small, migratory birds that trek from the Great Plains to California each year, are proliferating in Imperial Valley, after disappearing from parts of Central California, Aububon officials said.
That could affect solar energy developments planned for the agricultural areas that the birds visit, officials said.
An Audubon survey funded by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service last year found 3,072 mountain plovers in Imperial Valley. In 2011, the survey counted only 827 of the birds, and in 2002, it found 1,200, said Andrea Jones, important bird areas director for Audubon, California.
Meanwhile, “They’re completely gone from the San Jacinto Valley and central coastal California,” Jones said, noting that those areas each previously hosted 200 to 300 of the birds.
The abundance of the birds in the Imperial Valley and their disappearance elsewhere could signal changes in the short grassland habitat that they occupy, Jones said.
“They’re attracted to the agriculture in the Imperial Valley, particularly irrigated fields,” Jones said. “Places such as the Central Valley that have had the birds, don’t have grasslands anymore. They’ve been developed, or the agricultural practices have changed.”
As a result, she said, “the agricultural landscape in the Imperial Valley is becoming important to them in the winter.”
While the mountain plover isn’t listed as endangered, it is a state species of special concern, and is federally protected as a migratory bird.
So solar development and other projects planned for unused agricultural land in Imperial Valley must take them into account, said Gary George, renewable energy project director for Audubon, California.
“They are a sensitive species, and most developers when they find out about it would try to accommodate that species,” he said. “They’re a bird that everybody wants to see, and if you’re in Southern California, that’s one of the few places that you can see them.”