This week, Tejon Ranch Conservancy, along with the help of Los Angeles Audubon Society, counted six Mountain Plovers in Antelope Valley. While the number itself isn't particularly high, the location of the sighting is significant. Just an hour's drive from Los Angeles, a visit to the Tejon Ranch gives one the sense of stepping back a century or more. It stretches 67 miles from north to south, 475 square miles in all, and is by and large untouched. Back in 2008, Audubon California  joined with five other environmental organizations to announce a landmark agreement with the Tejon Ranch Company to preserve up to 240,000 acres of this spectacular and ecologically significant land. It was an agreement that took a tremendous effort on Audubon's part and the Mountain Plover report is an example of how important it was to protect this land.

Despite its name, the Mountain Plover is actually a resident of arid plains and prairies, rather than mountains. This unwary species is often quite approachable, a trait which has proven most unfortunate over the past century and a half. When intruded upon, the Mountain Plover will often choose to run rather than fly. Because of this behavior and because of loss of habitat, the species is a red category under the Audubon watch-list.

Because of the loss of habitat, Mountain Plovers are typically drawn to irrigated fields, habitat that is not what their ancestors used. The great news about Tejon is it offers habitat that is untouched and purely for the use of local species. 90 percent of the ranch is for ranching and conservation purposes only and is the largest privately held contiguous property in the state of California.

Six years after the conservation agreement, it is rewarding to see the hard effort to protect Tejon Ranch has payed off and that Mountain Plovers are now calling it home.

Photo by Derek Sieburth