Starting with a Strong Hand:
Shorebird Stewardship
on Kiawah Island
A
By Larry Niles, Ph.D., Niles Associates
ll too often the people who live in a major
wildlife habitat take it for granted and
unwittingly contribute to its decline. This
occurred in the Delaware Bay. People
from outside the Bay area saw one of the most important
shorebird stopovers in the world. They saw an elegant and
precisely timed ecological dance of shorebirds and horseshoe
crabs, together creating an astonishing natural spectacle
of interdependence. PBS, National Geographic, and the
Discovery Channel all came to chronicle this natural wonder.
But the people of Delaware Bay saw something else.
Photo by Jan van der Kam
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