This polygon shapefile represents boundaries for areas considered to be critical habitats for the Snowy Plover in Monterey County, California. The snowy plover is a small wader in the plover bird family. The Pacific Coast population has been designated a Threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. This layer is part of a collection of GIS data for Monterey County in California. This dataset is intended for researchers, students, and policy makers for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying, and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data.