Protect Piping Plovers in Stratford With a Modest-Sized Boardwalk

March 28, 2012—It will come as no surprise to Connecticut residents that unspoiled natural habitat on Long Island Sound is rare. We have miles and miles of shorefront development – condos, houses, subdivisions – putting the squeeze on small patches of salt marsh and strips of beach. And in the warm weather most of those beaches are crowded with people.

That makes it important to protect, as much as possible, beaches that provide first-rate habitat. And that’s why we are against a proposal to build an excessively large boardwalk on Long Beach in Stratford.

A barrier beach that stretches for a mile from Stratford to Bridgeport, Long Beach is an important part of a mosaic of habitats near the mouth of the Housatonic River. That mosaic includes 1,500 acres of salt marsh, vast mudflats, the dunes and beaches at Milford Point and Stratford Point, and the Housatonic estuary itself. Much of the area is part of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge, and the natural habitats that aren’t technically in the refuge are nevertheless an important part of the whole.

Long Beach fits into that category. Among other things, the barrier beach helps protect the Great Meadows salt marsh and it provides excellent habitat for Piping Plovers, a federally threatened species. Piping Plovers nest in only 14 of the 25 towns and cities along the Sound in Connecticut, and they nest only on untrammelled beaches – the more that people and dogs use a beach, the less likely Piping Plovers are to successfully nest. Over the last 22 years, Piping Plovers have done OK at Long Beach: 144 pairs have nested there, an average of 6.5 pairs a year. In a state where only 748 pairs have nested in total over that same period, that’s a significant percentage.

A committee formed by the Town of Stratford has been debating the future of Long Beach, and the most contentious issue seems to be the boardwalk. Some members want a boardwalk that stretches 12 feet wide and 1,320 feet long – a replica of a popular boardwalk at Silver Sands State Park, in Milford. Others want no boardwalk.

Milan Bull, Connecticut Audubon Society’s senior director of science and conservation, is a member of the committee and has been representing our position. We recognize that there are legitimate competing uses for the Long Island Sound waterfront, and we know that public access to the Sound is important for maintaining support for the expensive Sound cleanup that is now underway.

We think that a much smaller boardwalk than the 1,320-feet long proposal would be more than adequate. It will give the public access that’s appropriate for a sensitive conservation area while also helping to protect the beach and its nesting birds. We also think that the regulatory staff at the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection are the best people to decide the exact length and width of the boardwalk, in a public forum that takes into account the public and the natural habitat.