Cedar Island Piping Plover Technician Lead

The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources is hiring a Piping Plover Technician Lead in Richmond, VA. The role involves monitoring Piping Plover productivity, overseeing nest searches, and maintaining cameras on Cedar Sandbar. Candidates must have experience with beach nesting shorebirds, be comfortable walking long distances in challenging conditions, and possess a valid driver's license. The position requires hands-on fieldwork and is not remote.
Piping plover (PIPL) productivity in Virginia has been declining since 2016 and a clear cause has not been identified. Impeded access to foraging habitat has been identified as a contributing factor to low productivity on some islands. Cedar Sandbar is an area located on the north end of Cedar Island, one of Virginia’s barrier islands, that is owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia. It has a series of backside mudflats where PIPL broods were previously known to forage successfully. In the last 5 years, vegetation has increasingly impeded PIPL brood access to these productive foraging flats forcing the adults to bring just-hatched chicks to the ocean intertidal to feed where they are susceptible to avian predation. Moreover, depending on the nest location, getting to the ocean intertidal entails traversing a wide beach and going through seabird nesting areas that support predatory gulls and terns. To reestablish brood access to the backside flats, vegetation-free corridors were created between the nesting beach and the foraging flats.

The incumbent in this position will monitor the use of the corridors and backside mudflats by PIPL parental adults and broods and assess brood survival. The incumbent will also oversee the monitoring of PIPL breeding productivity and corridor use on Cedar Sandbar, maintain corridor and mudflat cameras and retrieve and review camera footage throughout the season. The successful candidate may also be tasked with collecting prey samples from the backside flats. Nest monitoring efforts will include searching all suitable habitat on Cedar Sandbar for scrapes and nests and recording their locations. All nests containing at least one egg with be marked with a numbered paint stick. Each nest or brood will be monitored three times per week until the nest hatches or fails, or the brood fledges or disappears. Nest status and brood status and location will be recorded during each visit. Lastly, the successful incumbent will begin retrieving and reviewing camera footage as soon nests begin to hatch.

The incumbent in this position will spend approximately 60% of their time conducting nest searches, locating and marking nests, following nest success through hatching, record brood locations until the brood fledges or disappears and the remaining 40% maintaining corridor and mudflat game cameras, retrieving and reviewing images throughout the breeding season, and collecting prey samples.

Minimum Qualifications

The following knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) are required for this position:
• Incumbent must have at least 1 year experience monitoring breeding productivity of PIPL or a similar beach nesting shorebird and must have the ability to make and record detailed observations of breeding adults, nests and broods and their locations.
• Incumbent must be comfortable walking up to 10 miles per day in hot, buggy conditions.
• Incumbent must be comfortable and willing to learn how to operate, tow and launch a small boat, being around water and possess the ability to swim.
• Incumbent must have completed or be willing to complete an online boater’s safety course
• Incumbent must have a valid driver’s license and must provide their own transportation outside of work hours.

Additional Considerations:
• Experience towing, launching and operating small motorboats in coastal inshore waters is very much preferred.
• Experience entering field data in Field Maps or a similar application and a proficiency with game cameras is also a plus.

Recent college/university graduates or students studying Wildlife Biology, Ecology, Natural Resources Management, or a related field, are encouraged to apply.

In support of the Commonwealth’s commitment to inclusion, we are encouraging individuals with disabilities to apply through the Commonwealth Alternative Hiring Process. To be considered for this opportunity, applicants will need to provide their AHP Letter (formerly COD) provided by the Department for Aging & Rehabilitative Services (DARS), or the Department for the Blind & Vision Impaired (DBVI). Service-Connected Veterans are encouraged to answer Veteran status questions and submit their disability documentation, if applicable, to DARS/DBVI to get their AHP Letter. Requesting an AHP Letter can be found at AHP Letter or by calling DARS at 800-552-5019.