The Piping Plover Procreation Problem
The first thing you face when going to the beach in the Hamptons is a dire warning: Restricted Area. No, it’s not about rip tides — this is the Piping Plover Nesting Area, and you may be arrested and fined for disturbing these small coastal birds. The species is procreationally challenged and listed as endangered, with only 4000 breeding pairs left worldwide. The baby piping plover also need to be protected and leave the nest in about 28 to 35 days (roughly the equivalent in human years of kids living at home).
Swaths of East End beaches are fenced off for the plovers’ nesting grounds to try to increase reproduction rates. I don’t see why we can’t just give them some CBD oil and play a little Barry White to help them get it on. Vast resources and protection are given to the charadrius melodus. Yet in terms of endangered procreation, the piping plover have nothing on the 40-year-old single female, otherwise known as femalius lululemonus. Where is the DEC in terms of encouraging her safe nesting? Where are the fences around her and potential mates which keep out predators like Instagram influencers and roving herds of stiletto-wearing share house babes?
How is a woman of quality who would make an excellent mate supposed to stand out? If men her own age are flocking to much younger chicks, then she may be faced with the older man or the malius viagrus. While her potential reproductive challenges are blasted in every headline, the focus rarely turns to this male part of the species with its own range of infertility issues.
I have tried to research the particular value of the piping plover to the ecosystem and have come up with the fact they conduct beach cleaning by eating the insect and small crustacean populations. They would perhaps better serve by picking up deflated balloons and plastic straws. Our femalius lululemonus, unlike her younger counterpart chiquitas firmbuttus, has reached an age of maturity and stability to be able to offer her offspring the best possible start in life. For survival of the species, Darwinian logic would do well to have a woman at peak fertility at age 42.
It seems cruel that when she is in her 20s she is warned that she could get pregnant at any moment, then when she hits 40, there is about a 20-minute window each month where if there is not a McDonald’s with a bathroom that locks, she and her partner may be out of luck. Her budget will have to cover a lot more than snow fencing and beach patrols to afford the IVF which may lead to a beautiful and much-loved child.
The piping plovers have environmental groups and the Audubon Society to support them and foster public education. The single female of a certain age is left with Soul Cycle and “Sex and The City” reruns. In a youth and beauty culture, her wisdom, nurturing, life experience, stability, and independence may be overlooked by biology or the male shaking his tail feathers. Ultimately, for both the women and the plover it is about a few good eggs, not only for embryos but loyal mates.
In the meantime, I’m still going to bring some Barry White to play on the beach.
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