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Nesting season for Piping Plovers, American Oystercatchers, and Least Terns is well on its way on Long Island beaches. When people, pets, or predators get too close, these birds often fly away or retreat to another area of the beach, leaving their nests and chicks vulnerable to danger.

Incidents like this seriously impact shorebird populations, which is why educators from the Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Լ����Ƶ Center have been working with students from Long Island schools to raise awareness about it—using art!

This is one exciting part of Լ����Ƶ New York’s coastal stewardship program, where local students are given the tools to take action by designing educational signs in their art classes. The messages they share prompt beachgoers to stay out of fenced off areas, keep dogs off pet-free beaches, and clean up garbage after a beach day.

These students—from Connolly and Landing Elementary Schools in Glen Cove, James H. Vernon School in Oyster Bay, and Drexel Elementary School in Westbury—learned all about birds and the work being done to conserve them in lessons with the Sanctuary’s education staff throughout the year.

This art project is a culmination of their lessons, giving students the opportunity to take what they have learned and use their own voices to help conserve our local shorebirds.

For many students, this includes sharing their messages in multiple languages. This year, an impressive five languages were represented in the signage, including Spanish, Korean, and Italian, allowing the important information on the signs to be shared with even more people.

Watch two students do a bilingual presentation on their signs!

Each year, the Sanctuary hosts an event to celebrate the students and their art. Selected students get the opportunity to present and speak about their designs to their classmates, local officials, and the press. These students also receive awards for their dedication to bird conservation and the hard work they put into their designs.

At this year’s celebration, which occurred earlier this month, students from Drexel Elementary School and James H. Vernon School were joined by Oyster Bay Cove Mayor Charles Goulding, Director of Fine Arts for the Oyster Bay School District Erica Giglio Pac, and Representative from Town of Oyster Bay Parks Bryan Rhoads.

“I look forward to working with students on this project each year,” says Julie Nelson, the Sanctuary’s education manager. “I’m always impressed by how creative and thoughtful they are, and how much from our lessons they bring into their designs.”

Just in time for summer, the selected designs will be printed onto signs and installed on beaches across Long Island to remind beachgoers of the importance of sharing the shore with beach-nesting birds.

This work is funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Long Island Sound Futures Fund.