The people of the Delaware Bay appreciated the attention on the crabs and birds but saw it all as background in their daily struggle to make a living , something without their help . And why not ? They grew up with close to 50 million horseshoe crabs carpeting bay beaches every year while millions of shorebirds darkened the sky . Lasting only a month or two at most , it seemed only a part of their ordinary experience . How could it be lost ?
But like the people that depended upon the great northern forest as described in Annie Proulx ’ s Barkskins or the high prairie portrayed in Timothy Egan ’ s Worst Hard Time , the people living along the Delaware Bay , never imagined an alternate future where most of Nature ’ s largess would be lost — a future where not only crabs and shorebirds but also weakfish , flounder , blue claw crabs , even the marsh and the beach themselves , would slowly disappear . All were worn away by careless management and unchecked greedy and shortsighted plans to cash in our nature ’ s wealth . Awareness came late and now , although recovery is underway , it brings with it significant cost and major political difficulty . The current generation may never again see the original ecological glory of Delaware Bay .
Kiawah Island has struggled through the same process but has created an alternative that kept the ecological system intact . I worked in South Carolina in the mid ’ 70s when the Island ’ s development was still in the planning stages . Decades later I returned to work on the Island ’ s shorebirds and found the community had preserved the Island ’ s essential natural character . That a wild coastal island species like the bobcat persists is a good sign that the plan to balance the needs of people and wildlife has worked . The very presence of red knots , the subject of our work , spoke to the Island ’ s ecological integrity .
For perpetuating a protective environment for shorebirds , a good stopover needs more than food . Like most birds , they must always balance the need for food with the threats that constantly endangered their lives . Hawks eat shorebirds , and shorebirds
Photo by Jim Jordan Photo by Larry Niles
SUMMER / FALL 2017 • VOLUME 38
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