Sandpipers Making a Comeback At Last?
11/7/09
By Lisa Selvaggio
The tiny birds with those long beaks and legs flit across the sand at what seems like break-neck speed, my camera trying to pan fast enough with their movements to snap a sharp enough photo before they continue down the shoreline in search of food. There are some 85 species in the sandpiper family, 37 of which regularly breed in North America, and I have seen them on the shores of New Jersey and Florida but I cannot say which particular species of this group of birds I have witnessed. But one species, the red knot, is particularly extraordinary, as these tiny birds migrate from Tierra Del Fuego in South America to northern Canada, where they breed. Relying heavily upon the eggs of horseshoe crabs at their key refueling stop at Delaware Bay, they plump themselves back up from near-starvation in order to continue on their journey. Like so many other wild animals, though, these birds have been on the brink of extinction because of human activity – in this case, the over-hunting of horseshoe crabs. Now, however, according to a recent article in Smithsonian Magazine’s October 2009 issue entitled “Return of the Sandpiper,” it seems that because people have taken a step back and allowed the crabs to flourish, the birds are making a comeback too.
Environmentalists had been tracking the birds’ numbers for years, noticing a stark decrease in their population when roughly three million horseshoe crabs were being harvested for human use in the 1990s. For decades, the birds were losing ground, unable to find enough food on their way to Canada. Those that made it were unable to breed. But things have been looking up ever since states including Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware have cut back on the number of horseshoe crabs harvested, allowing their numbers to increase once more, thereby allowing the tiny red knots to find the eggs that will sustain them for the rest of their journey.
Reducing our destructive ways toward the planet and its creatures is the key to wildlife conservation. The connections are evident, especially in a case like the red knot’s, where the hunting of an essential food source, not of the red knots themselves, nearly led to their demise. They are not completely out of danger yet, but the news seems promising, and the hope is that, if humans can learn to use Nature without disturbing the balance, the sandpipers and the crabs will reclaim their places, their numbers increasing once again to what they should be. There is no cause for celebration yet for the red knots, but the key is that people realized what they were doing and made changes to their behavior, giving the birds a second chance. If that trend were to continue across the globe, so many other species would thrive, as well as our own.