REHOBOTH BEACH — A stretch of beach at Gordons Pond within Cape Henlopen State Park has been reopened after the failure of a piping plover nest discovered in May, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control announced Friday.

The area was closed off June 26 to protect the piping plovers, which are a state-endangered species and listed as a federally threatened beach-nesting shorebird under the Endangered Species Act.

The stretch has been reopened immediately for pedestrian and vehicular traffic, including permitted surf fishing vehicles with weekend drive-on reservations.

The suspected cause of the piping plover nest failure was predation by red foxes which are believed to have claimed one of the parent plovers and all three chicks that hatched last month.

The nest was protected against predation by an enclosure constructed by the department’s Division of Fish and Wildlife biologists, but the adults were susceptible when they left the nest to feed, as were the chicks once they hatched and began venturing outside the nest area.

Divisions of Fish and Wildlife and Parks and Recreation staff removed 800 feet of fencing Friday that had blocked off the area around the nest to public encroachment. Though the first such closure for protection of piping plovers at Gordons Pond in seven years, the species has nested there on a number of occasions since its federal listing in 1986.

The protective fencing had extended to the high water mark on a portion of Cape Henlopen’s ocean beach while symbolic fencing – cautionary signage on fence posts tied off by twine – also was removed from the area as it reopened Friday to beachgoers and anglers.

Another stretch of beach at Cape Henlopen, The Point, is currently closed through Sept. 1, with its bayside beach closed through Oct. 1. The location has been closed annually since 1993 for the benefit of threatened and endangered beach-nesting and migratory shorebird species to include red knots, piping plovers, American oystercatchers and least terns.