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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