Editorial

The Red Knot: On the Brink of Extinction

by Hugh Simmons | December 1, 2005

Red knot © Heather ForcierThe Red Knot (Calidris canutus rufa) is on a fast track to extinction.

For decades, photographers, bird watchers and nature enthusiasts have gone to the shores of the Delaware Bay to view and record two of nature’s great spectacles. Hundreds of thousands of Horseshoe Crabs, one of the oldest animals on the planet, come to lay their eggs on the beaches in May and June. At the same time, shorebirds stop to feed on the nutrient-rich crab eggs, doubling their body mass, for the last long leg of their migration to the Arctic tundra. Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones and Semipalmated Sandpipers show up in such numbers that they blanket the beaches . . . well, at least that is the way it was. Today, one sees handfuls of turnstones and sandpipers and you are lucky if you see Red Knots at all.

Red knot © Byron Holston

Photo © Byron Holston. A lone Red Knot on a Delaware beach in front of Horseshoe Crabs in June 2005. Once a year thousands of Horseshoe Crabs visit the Delaware and New Jersey shores where they spawn and lay millions of eggs. The Red Knot, while traveling from its wintering ground in Tierra Del Fuego, Chile to the Arctic region of Canada, stops and feeds on the eggs to fuel its approximate 10,000 mile journey. Byron Holston is an amateur nature photographer living in suburban Maryland near Washington DC. He spends his free time photographing wildlife in the mid-Atlantic area.

Red knot © Jim Zipp Horseshoe crab eggs © Jim Zipp
Photos © Jim Zipp. Scenes of the Horseshoe Crabs and eggs from the 1980’s before the Horseshoe Crab and Red Knot populations started their significant decline.Jim Zipp has been photographing nature and wildlife for over twenty-five years. His first published photograph was of a Saw-Whet Owl in “The National Audubon Society’s Encyclopedia of North American Birds” in 1980. Since then his images have been featured in hundreds of publications from National Geographic, GEO and Audubon to Birder’s World, Wildbird, Discovery, Nature Conservancy and ABA’s Birding Magazine to name a few. He is represented by agencies around the world as well as managing his own stock files. A small sampling can be seen at www.jimzipp.com.

The reason is that there are no longer enough Horseshoe Crabs to lay enough eggs to provide the birds enough body mass to make it to the Arctic tundra. Annual aerial surveys of shorebird numbers on the Delaware Bay beaches in May and June have shown that Red Knots have declined from nearly 100,000 in the late 1980’s to 13,300 in 2004.

During this same period, the Horseshoe Crab harvest increased from 500,000 pounds per year to 5-7 million pounds per year mostly to be used as bait for the eel and conch fishing industry. A trawl survey, a specially designed assessment of underwater resources, showed a 90% decline in Horseshoe Crab stock from 1990 to 2004.

Now, recent independent studies have predicted that the Red Knot could become extinct as early as 2010 if drastic action is not taken to restore the Horseshoe Crab population.1 Ruddy Turnstones and Semipalmated Sandpipers are not as significantly affected because their migration pathways include areas other than the Delaware Bay. By contrast, the Red Knot may have 90% of its entire species population on the Delaware Bay during one day.

White red knot © Heather Forcier

Photo © Heather Forcier. While Red Knots do take advantage of other food sources, the nutrient-rich Horseshoe Crab eggs in the mid-Atlantic are critical in helping the birds increase their body mass enough to make their long migratory journey. This bird was photographed near the Texas Gulf coast in April 2005. Heather Forcier is a nationally published nature photographer and editor in chief at NatureScapes.net. To see more of her work, please visit www.heatherforcier.com.

On July 28, 2005, the National Audubon Society, the American Bird Conservancy, and Defenders of Wildlife petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the Red Knot as endangered using its emergency listing authority under the Endangered Species Act.

If you are interested in this issue, you too can support efforts to save the Red Knot from becoming extinct in our time. To encourage protection of the Red Knot under the Endangered Species Act write to:

H. Dale Hall
Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service
1849 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20242

To encourage Marylanders to use their influence to urge the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to impose a moratorium on the landings of Horseshoe Crabs write to:

Secretary Ronald Franks
Md. Dept. of Natural Resources
580 Taylor Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401

Other resources:

1 Baker, Allan J., et al., Rapid Population Decline in Red Knots: Fitness Consequences of Decreased Refueling Rates and Late Arrival in Delaware Bay, The Royal Society (2004)

About the Author

Hugh Simmons is President of Chesapeake Audubon, a chapter of the National Audubon Society in Maryland. He is also a nature photographer and member of the community at NatureScapes.net.

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