At the 21th Mayor’s Annual Environmental Luncheon held by Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown, Audubon recognized Huguenot Memorial Park’s Naturalist Shelley Beville for her dedication to monitoring and protecting the park’s birds.
8028.
This is the number of Royal Tern, Laughing Gull and Sandwich Tern’s young Shelley and her team of volunteers counted at Huguenot Memorial Park on July 12 2012. Shelley Beville works for the City of Jacksonville and is the park’s naturalist. She is in charge of monitoring and protecting the park’s impressive bird colony; and it is a precious site that she has under her care: Huguenot’s Royal Tern colony is the only one on Florida’s East Coast, one of the two largest and one of only five in the entire state. Located on a peninsula instead of an island like these birds usually choose, it is also the most reachable. This presents both the fantastic opportunity to showcase the amazing spectacle of the chicks spread out on the beach in the thousands, and the challenge to keep these fragile young birds safe from disturbances caused by people.
Shelley and her team of volunteers count the bird weekly during nesting season, and twice a month the rest of the year. The Florida Shorebird Database shows it as the most assiduous monitoring effort of a Royal Tern colony in the state! The data collected will help track the population trend of this species, quoted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as particularly vulnerable to climate change. See the 2010 State of the Birds Report by clicking here.
In 2009, we were seeing flightless chicks in the path of vehicle - now have a seasonal bird protection area, free from public beach driving.
Shelley, interns, and volunteers bird stewards are posted at the boundary of the bird protection area to prevent vehicles intrusion, to advise pedestrians on where to walk so the chicks can stay undisturbed on the cooler sand by the water’s edge, and to answer the questions the public has about the birds. Shelley is always making sure the stewards are comfortable and make them feel appreciated!
Education is key to achieving success in bird conservation. In the four seasons bird stewards have been deployed at Huguenot, we have seen the interest and the appreciation in the park’s birds growing, and we have witnessed a remarkable increase in support of the birds’ protection measures.
Since she was hired, Shelley has conducted educational programs at the park. With the support of the park’s manager and his staff, Shelley created a wonderful Nature Center at the park, small, but with every inch filled with natural treasures, quasi all of them collected in the park. Come and visit: you’ll enjoy learning about shells, sea turtles, marine mammals, birds, and many more critters!
Our thanks to Mayor’s Brown and his administration for “promoting positive eco-action”, and congratulations to Shelley!
