If canaries in coal mines were harbingers of safe conditions, surely piping plovers at Waukegan Beach mean the city is overcoming its polluted past.
Like swallows heading back to the old Spanish mission of Capistrano in Southern California, or buzzards returning to Hinkley, Ohio, Waukegan has its own fashionable feathered friends in Pepper, the piping plover, and his mate, Blaze. Since 2023, the pair have been returning to the city’s Lake Michigan strand.
Pepper was seen over a week ago on Waukegan Beach and bird spotters are awaiting Blaze, according to the Lake County Audubon Society. If two endangered avian travelers can overcome and overlook a legacy of industrial pollution along the lakefront, so can humans.
“The return of the piping plovers to Waukegan is a powerful testament to what we can achieve through environmental stewardship,” Mayor Sam Cunningham said in a statement. “Together, we are ensuring that this success story continues to thrive for generations to come.”
The city partners with the Lake County Audubon Society and other area nature advocates to protect and preserve the vital habitats of the plovers and other migratory birds, which they depend on during long journeys along the Lake Michigan flyway.
“We are incredibly excited to welcome Pepper back to Waukegan,” Lake County Audubon Society President Carolyn Lueck said in a statement. “This is a success story for our entire community.”
The piping plover has been the official city bird since 2024. It’s a better designation than, say, pigeons — rock doves if you want to get fancy — which nest comfortably across the region. Or Canadian geese, which trundle about retention ponds across the Lake County landscape.
Waukegan has gone a step further than just having a city bird. Officials recently acquired a piping plover sculpture that was featured in the exhibition “Through the Eyes of the Piping Plovers: The Flora, Fauna and Communities of the Lake Plain” at the Robert T. Wright Community Gallery of Art at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, according to an Audubon Society news release.
Pepper and Blaze might not have the notoriety of Chicago’s avian idols, Pippin and Imani, seen on Montrose Beach last month, but they come close. Audubon volunteer monitors have logged more than 1,600 hours in watching, studying and determining where the local pair has wintered.
Like many Midwesterners, Pepper has spent past winters on the Gulf of Mexico, a beach at Fort Myers, Florida; Blaze prefers the Cape Fear area of North Carolina. Back in their summer breeding grounds, Waukegan’s piping plovers, a federally endangered species since 1986, nest on a section of beach that is not open to the public due to longstanding site restrictions.
According to the Audubon Society, the area is closely monitored throughout the season to ensure the safety of the birds, with protection efforts carried out in coordination with state and federal agencies as part of a broader managed site. The work is part of the Sharing Our Shore Waukegan initiative, a seven-year partnership between the city and the society focused on protecting the lakefront’s habitat of dunes, wetlands and prairies while supporting endangered species recovery.
Indeed, once there may have been as many as 800 nesting pairs of plovers along the Great Lakes, according to the Audubon Society. The Illinois shorebird population disappeared completely by 1955 due to habitat loss from beach development and recreation.
By the early 1980s, fewer than 15 pairs remained in the Great Lakes. Pepper and Blaze were captive-raised and released into the wild in 2023. Since then, they have hatched at least six chicks.
“This beach supports far more than a single species,” Lueck said. “It is part of a much larger story of migration, biodiversity and community stewardship.
“Each return is a reminder of both the resilience of these birds and the responsibility we share to protect the habitat they depend on,” she added. “This is a success story for our entire community.”
The same could be said of Waukegan’s battle to recover from generations of damage and federal Superfund designations caused by a variety of polluters, from major lakefront industries to garbage landfills. The ring-necked piping plovers’ return to the city shoreline is another step in that direction.
As is the use of settlements from lawsuits targeting past spoilers of Waukegan’s natural areas. Mayor Cunningham announced early last month that the city now has $2.7 million in funds from class-action lawsuits against three firms that dumped industrial pollutants used in manufacturing processes into Waukegan Harbor.
That money will be used initially to replace lead water pipes with copper in older neighborhoods. Something good has come from something bad for both the infrastructure, the environment and its creatures.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor. sellenews@gmail.com. X @sellenews.
