David Mizrahi and Guy Morrison conducted surveys on the South American coast off Suriname, French Guiana and the northern coast of Brazil this winter. To their dismay they found 80% to 90% declines since 1985 in most species including semipalmated sandpipers, ruddy turnstones even lesser yellowlegs. These dramatic declines match the fall in red knots, the only difference being the knot started at lower numbers and has a much more immediate threat of extinction. Taken together, these declines point to a Atlantic Flyway-wide problem for most shorebird species.
Yellowlegs on a Delaware Bay tidal creek
Unfortunately, this is not one of those problems we decide to fix and in a few years we are back to normal. The math tells the story. Each year adults make young and a portion of both groups die. The mortality rate measures the number that survive each year. In two recent estimates, adult mortality varied between 9% and 17%. In some years mortality can go as high as 44%. Growth in a population depends on mortality and production of young. In a good year perhaps one of every 5 adults (20%) are juveniles in wintering populations (20%). Putting it together, births minus deaths, the best one can hope for is a growth of about 10% or so. That means every year, with everything going right a population of 25,000 knots can expect to grow by 2,500 birds a year. At that rate it would take 15 years to recover.
That is if everything goes right and unfortunately they are not. The Delaware Bay stopover is still not recovered from over harvest of horseshoe crabs and the Atlantic State Marine Fish Commission is doing it best to increase harvests again. Climate change is likely to prolong the recovery of crabs — interfering with the timing of crab breeding and shorebird arrival. This timing is now exquisitely synchronous but can it last? Climate change is also likely to increase the frequency of hurricanes and tropical storms crossing the fall migratory flights of shorebirds as they make way across the so called Bermuda triangle. We may have lost significant numbers of red knots in fall migration because of tropical storms — if declines in the Tierra del Fuego wintering areas turn out to be validated by numbers on Delaware Bay. Odds are the losses will grow and the chances of good production will dim.
To avert this looming catastrophe we need to increase survival and the prospects of good reproduction. So what can be done? As I have written before this has been done by waterfowl hunters. So what can bird watchers and biologist do for shorebirds?
First, fix Delaware Bay. It is the lynchpin of the Atlantic Coast Flyway for shorebirds. Crab harvest must stop until recovery is assured. And this important job should not be left to the people who profit from harvest or those that represent them, like the Atlantic States Marine Fish Commission
Second, the knot must be listed as a federal threatened species. Listing will create a new round of protective efforts — from due consideration when beaches are replenished with sand to the management of US Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuges.
Third, the international shorebird flyway must be recognized by the Atlantic Flyway Council and put on an equal footing with waterfowl, not homogenized with every other non-hunted species, as shorebirds are now. The Flyway Council should be reformed to include representatives from all South American countries on the western Atlantic Flyway.
Fourth, and most important, the people who love birds must tax themselves to generate a brand new source of funding for state and federal agencies. This could be a shorebird stamp, like the waterfowl stamp, or a tax on binoculars and spotting scopes. This will finally make bird watchers a potent political force in this country’s conservation. A national or state tax would create a new rising tide of effort that will lift all boats (and birds) — the rapidly declining fate of shorebirds could be the call that rallies us to action. 
This cartoon by Ding Darling from the 1930’s mobilized waterfowl hunters to pressure the government to action(and voluntarily imposing fees and taxes to do the job).
