These Birds Have Their Own Beach. Their Human Neighbors Want In.

Sections of the Rockaway Peninsula, a coastal strip of land in southern Queens, look like beach towns more than the concrete and steel landscape of much of New York City.

On a mile-long stretch of the boardwalk in Edgemere, a neighborhood in the Rockaways that was a thriving resort destination a century ago, you can still see open skies, dunes and the ocean.

But for most of the summer, the beach here is closed.

Since 1996, this swath of sand and surf has been reserved for much of the spring and summer for nesting coastal piping plovers, which are endangered in New York and protected federally by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Along the Eastern Seaboard, from barrier islands to private and public beaches on the mainland, efforts are being made to provide safe habitats for them.

Some residents of Edgemere say the beach restrictions are unfair and further isolating for an area with a history of neglect that already lacks basics like a grocery store, a playground and reliable drainage on the often-flooded streets. Some are now asking if the beach can be shared during peak season with the surrounding community and leveraged for a revival of the neighborhood.

The grayish, brown and white birds, about seven inches in length, are at risk of extinction — about 6,000 currently live along the Atlantic Coast — because of human development, disturbances like vandalism and natural predators on the shoreline. (Plover species native to the Great Lakes and the northern Great Plains are also federally protected.)