They are the size of a football, have a bright orange beak, long legs, beady yellow eyes, and can fly up to 2,000 miles. While they inhabit American shores today, there was a time when American oystercatchers were wiped out from New England.By the beginning of the twentieth century, these birds had become extinct in the region due to years of hunting and egg collecting. But now their numbers are increasing, all thanks to the efforts of conservationists. When the new chicks are born, a group of biologists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service run after them to take their body measurements and attach bands to their legs.“There’s a problem. They can fly,” Alan Knedel, a senior conservation biologist at the environmental group Manomet Conservation Sciences, told The Associated Press, as he watched the team pursue two chicks on a Rhode Island beach.
The range in the 787-acre Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge is part of a national effort to restore oystercatcher populations along the coasts of the USA.
Raising awareness and money
About $10 million has been raised over the past decade by 35 coastal organizations in 16 states, all in an effort to conserve the birds. Much of the campaign focuses on educating beachgoers about the existence of the wrigglers, known for their piercing calls and their habit of using their sharp beaks to crack open oysters and mussels.
Measures have also been taken to protect their terrestrial nesting sites from predators and pets on beaches, sand dunes, salt marshes or tidal sediments.An important part of the conservation process was determining that “chick survival is the big thing driving the decline,” Knedel revealed. Then, individually tailored plans were developed by organizations in the American Oystercatcher Working Group, which was led by Shiloh Schulte of Manomet, a conservation biologist and field scientist who died in 2025 in a helicopter crash in Alaska while on a mission to protect shorebirds.
His initial aerial survey showed that their numbers had declined by double digits.Different sites have different reasons for rejection. While recreational disturbance may be the culprit in one location, predators may be the culprit in another, while sea level rise and loss of dune structure could be another.Furthermore, the birds also benefit from federal protections given to the piping plover, a threatened shorebird that nests in some of the same areas.
During the piping plover nesting season, vehicles and dogs are restricted or prohibited near beach nesting sites. “With a little focused effort and attention to this really charismatic bird, you can teach the public how to share the beach,” said Luann Johnson, a wildlife biologist who founded the nonprofit BiodiversityWorks, one of the groups working on the oystercatcher’s recovery.
The island was the first place for Massachusetts oystercatchers to nest when they began to recover and has seen numbers of breeding pairs increase by 77% since 2009.In South Carolina, nearly 30 breeding sites for these animals have been closed to protect their nesting habitat. Georgia and North Carolina also close breeding sites along with trapping and euthanizing predators such as foxes, raccoons, and coyotes during the breeding season.From 2008 to 2023, the number of oystercatchers increased by 45% along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Their recovery is particularly important, as a 2023 study found that most shorebird populations in North America are declining.
“It’s amazing, it’s a great conservation success story,” said Maureen Dworkin, a federal wildlife biologist who led the linking effort and works at the National Wildlife Refuge complex in Rhode Island.Their recovery was a testament to the species’ resilience, said Ted Simmons, a retired professor emeritus at North Carolina State University who began studying the birds on North Carolina’s Outer Banks in 1995. He noted that American oystercatchers have been found nesting on rooftops in the United States and in grasslands in Europe.
He recalls that one pair was found nesting in a hole at a bus stop in Iceland. “If these birds were highly specialized and needed a specific recipe to survive, it would be more difficult,” Simons said.
“But what we found is that these birds are incredibly adaptable.”
Battle for the future
Despite their resilience and conservation efforts by humans, threats to American oystercatchers remain. The most important of which is climate change, which has led to rising sea levels and erosion, which has destroyed their nests.
This has prompted states such as Georgia to build raised oyster shell nesting platforms for birds and to use material dredged from shipping canals to create and maintain nesting islands. Along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, Audubon is replenishing shell burials—layers of ancient oyster shells where oystercatchers nest.There are also concerns that changes being made this month to the Endangered Species Act could affect nesting sites, especially where state protections are weak. Environmental groups, which filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block the changes, fear breeding grounds could be damaged by them. The changes would allow oil and gas exploration, mining, logging and other developments in critical wildlife habitat as long as animals are not killed or injured.
“It’s a direct attack on the protections that have allowed many shorebird species to recover,” Knedel said.