ARIANE MÜLLER NWF.ORG/NW 51 plates started backing up to our beaches,” recalls Niles. Between 1992 and 1997, the bay’s horseshoe crab harvest shot up from fewer than 100,000 to more than 2.5 million crabs a year. Niles and his colleagues knew these larger harvests would spell trouble for birds that need crab eggs to survive long migrations and breed successfully. “Horseshoe crab eggs are like a superfood,” explains David Mizrahi, vice president of research and monitoring for NWF affiliate New Jersey Audubon and a biologist who has studied migratory semipalmated sandpipers for nearly 30 years. “They’re easy to find, easy to digest, and they’re filled with fat, which is exactly what migratory birds need.” And the birds need a lot of them, devouring thousands of eggs on a typical day. Mizrahi and Niles have seen the greatest declines among shorebird species that migrate the farthest and depend most heavily on Delaware Bay as a stopover: the semipalmated sandpiper, ruddy turnstone and a unique subspecies of red knot, Calidris canutus rufa. To get to the Arctic and successfully breed and raise their chicks after they arrive, all three species must consume enough horseshoe crab eggs to double their weight in just two weeks. Conservationists worry particularly about the red knot, the bay’s flagship shorebird named for its rusty breast during the breeding season. Most of the Western Hemisphere’s rufa red knots migrate nearly 20,000 miles a year—from the very little, have thrived through countless global upheavals, from multiple ice ages to five major extinction events. Yet today, many conservationists fear the crabs may be no match for a relative newcomer to the tree of life: Homo sapiens. For hundreds of years, humans have been contaminating the animals’ marine habitats, destroying their spawning beaches, even grinding them up to feed hogs and fertilize local crops. In recent decades, we’ve also turned the horseshoe crab into a global commodity sought by commercial fishermen, who use the animals to bait eel and whelk traps, and the biomedical industry, which uses extracts from the animals’ blood to screen surgical implants, injectable drugs and vaccines (including COVID-19 vaccines) for bacterial contamination. The cumulative impact is obvious to longtime observers such as Workman. “Forty or 50 years ago,” he says, “there were so many horseshoe crabs that you couldn’t even walk on Slaughter Beach.” Also obvious, at least to scientists, has been a decrease in the number of eggs the crabs leave behind on spawning beaches—along with a simultaneous crash of shorebird populations that rely on those eggs to fuel springtime migrations to the Arctic. In an analysis recently published in the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, biologist Larry Niles of Wildlife Restoration Partnerships and his colleagues summarize four decades of egg-abundance data from New Jersey spawning beaches. They report that egg numbers have fallen by more than 90 percent since the 1980s. Shorebird “superfood” During that same period, he says, long-running surveys of shorebirds that stop to rest and refuel along Delaware Bay in spring show that the birds’ numbers fell from an estimated 1.5 million in the 1980s to about 200,000 today. “Shorebirds are among the fastest-declining groups of birds, and the fastest-declining shorebirds are species that migrate through Delaware Bay and depend on the eggs of horseshoe crabs,” Niles says. It was shorebird scientists who first sounded the alarm about horseshoe crabs in the early 1990s, when a thennew fishery for eel and whelk took off and began using the crabs as bait. “All of a sudden, trucks with out-of-state At Charles River Laboratories in South Carolina, horseshoe crabs are drained of about a third of their blue blood—used to test vaccines and other medical products for contaminants.
52 NATIONAL WILDLIFE . WINTER 2023 BOTH: ARIANE MÜLLER Biomedical companies value the horseshoe crab for its unusual blood. In contrast to the blood of humans and most other animals, oxygen is transported through the crab’s blood not by iron-containing hemoglobin but by a copper-containing protein that turns the blood milky blue. In the 1950s, scientists discovered that a substance within this blood—called Limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL—rapidly clots in the presence of bacterial toxins. Since the late 1970s, the pharmaceutical industry has used LAL to screen for potentially dangerous toxins in virtually all products made to be injected or implanted into a human body. As such products have proliferated, the demand for horseshoe crabs by the industry has more than doubled during the past two decades—totaling 697,025 crabs collected and shipped to specialized “bleeding” facilities on the U.S. East Coast in 2020 alone, according to data reported to ASMFC. The majority of these animals are taken from Delaware Bay. Although the companies are supposed to release all horseshoe crabs unharmed—after draining about a third of each animal’s blood—“we suspect they’re killing more crabs than they own up to,” says Niles, “and nobody is allowed to see their data.” One peer-reviewed study estimated mortality at up to 30 percent. “That would be more than 200,000 crabs,” Mizrahi says. “And the number that survive after release also is unknown, as is whether horseshoe crabs that are bled have altered behavior” such as difficulty navigating or spawning. Fortunately, two decades ago, scientists developed a synthetic alternative to LAL—recombinant Factor C, or rFC— that several published studies conclude is just as effective as the blood-based product. Yet while rFC has been approved as an LAL alternative in dozens of other countries, including China and members of the European Union, the U.S. southern tip of South America to the Arctic and back—one of the longest annual journeys of any migratory bird. Sadly, the number of red knots tallied along the bay’s shores has plummeted from 94,000 in 1989 to just over 12,000 in the latest surveys in 2022. Counts from the birds’ wintering grounds (which can be better indicators than counts at stopovers, where birds are coming and going) confirm the bad news: Aerial surveys conducted in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in the mid-1980s by the Canadian Wildlife Service recorded nearly 68,000 red knots. When the same biologists surveyed the same regions in 2012, they found only about 15,000. Since then, the number has continued to decline. In 2014, the rufa red knot was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In response to concerns about the red knot, in 2013, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), a regional regulatory body, restricted the bay’s horseshoe crab bait harvests to male crabs only and set an annual harvest quota of no more than 500,000 Delaware Bay crabs. Yet despite a decade of these restrictions, the bay’s horseshoe crab population—based on trawl samples gathered each fall at the mouth of the bay and reported to ASMFC—has not significantly increased. The real blue bloods “What this tells me,” Mizrahi says, “is that the crab population may have stabilized, but it has not recovered, which is what we need for the birds to recover.” He cites two likely reasons. One is the unquantified, yet inarguably significant, number of crabs killed as bycatch by flounder, scallop and other fisheries. The other is the number of crabs killed by the biomedical industry—a figure that remains murky because the companies are not required to make their data public. A female horseshoe crab will lay tens of thousands of eggs during the spawning season, supplying nutritious and abundant food for fish, sea turtles, shorebirds and other wildlife. NWF priority National Wildlife Federation affiliates Delaware Nature Society and New Jersey Audubon have long worked to protect horseshoe crabs by engaging in research, education and advocacy. At the Federation’s June 2021 annual meeting, New Jersey Audubon proposed a resolution calling for increased protection for horseshoe crabs as well as a transition by the pharmaceutical industry to a synthetic alternative to the animal’s blood for medical testing. The resolution was approved by NWF and its 53 state and territorial affiliates. HELPING HORSESHOE CRABS
NWF.ORG/NW 53 sidering a proposal to allow female crab harvests from the bay for the first time in a decade. According to Niles, who has lived much of his life along Delaware Bay, the benefits of recovering horseshoe crabs to their historic numbers would resonate beyond the shorebirds and other wildlife that rely on the animals’ gift of abundant eggs. The bay’s once-famed productivity—including sport fisheries nurtured by crab eggs—also supported thriving businesses and communities that have largely faded away, he says. “Walk up to a marina or boat captain today, and they’ll tell you there are no fish.” But Niles has not lost hope. With most Delaware Bay shorelines publicly owned and habitat restoration at an alltime high, he believes that even a temporary moratorium on killing horseshoe crabs “could bring this ecosystem right back to what it once was.” n Laura Tangley is senior editor of National Wildlife. pharmaceutical industry has dragged its feet. Just one U.S. company, Eli Lilly, has fully embraced the synthetic, bringing four drugs tested with rFC to market so far. Recovering a species—and an ecosystem To encourage drug companies to switch to rFC—and reduce crab deaths from all other sources—48 organizations, including NWF, now work together through the Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition. Its goal is “to restore horseshoe crabs so they can support the wildlife and ecosystems that depended on them for millennia,” says coalition steering committee member Zach Cockrum, NWF’s senior director of ocean sustainability. The crab’s recovery could occur in time to help many other species that rely on it, says fellow committee member Mizrahi, who cites research published in Environmental and Resource Economics projecting both a horseshoe crab recovery and a rebound in red knot numbers following a 12-year moratorium on crab bait harvests. Yet ASMFC, the only regulatory body that oversees crab harvests, may be moving in the opposite direction instead. When this issue went to press in November 2022, the commission was conLooking much like its ancestors did millions of years ago, a lone horseshoe crab spawns at sunrise on Bowers Beach in Delaware. The animals have survived five major extinction events.
54 NATIONAL WILDLIFE . WINTER 2023 BY DELANEY MCPHERSON TOP: STEVE WINTER; BOTTOM: NWF (LIVING HABITATS LLC) HISTORIC GROUNDBREAKING CONSTRUCTION BEGINS ON CROSSING O n Earth Day in April 2022, a crowd of people gathered along the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills, California, to celebrate a momentous event that had been a decade in the making: groundbreaking for the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (left, artist’s rendering), which, once complete, will be the largest wildlife crossing in the world. The structure is a response to 20 years of research showing that roads are deadly for animals trying to cross them and have also created habitat islands that genetically isolate wildlife, particularly the Santa Monica Mountains population of mountain lions. fıeld work .
NWF.ORG/NW 55 impact report READ NWF’S ANNUAL REPORT Th e National Wildlife Federation’s annual impact report is now available online, featuring stories of our biggest wins for people and wildlife. Read the full report covering equity and justice, policy, climate work and more at impact.nwf.org. TOP: CHARLIE SUMMERS (NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY); MIDDLE AND BOTTOM: STEVE WINTER discovered P-22, Miguel Ordeñana, actress Julia Butters and philanthropist Wallis Annenberg (above right, with Beth Pratt)—the ground was offi cially broken. Beth Pratt, NWF’s regional executive director for California, joined Annenberg—a major donor to the project—California Governor Gavin Newsom, NWF CEO and President Collin O’Mara, local schoolchildren and others wielding golden shovels (left ) to dig up the fi rst scoops of soil. Scheduled for completion in 2025, the construction will be streamed on a live feed. “You don’t get too many days like this one in life,” Pratt says of the groundbreaking. “Th ese mountain lions are going to have a future because of this work.” Mountain lions have long been poster children for the eff ort to build the crossing, with Griffi th Park resident cat P-22 (top left ) being the most famous. Noting increasing signs of inbreeding caused by habitat fragmentation, scientists predict the Santa Monica Mountains lion population could go extinct within 50 years. In addition, at least nine cats have died in collisions with cars in the past year. Conservationists hope the crossing will allow mountain lions and other wildlife safe passage across the freeway as well as reduce inbreeding by connecting habitat and expanding the size of the cats’ mating pool. For the past decade, the National Wildlife Federation has worked with partners and led the #SaveLACougars campaign to fundraise and increase awareness of the need for the crossing. Th e campaign has held events such as the annual P-22 Day Festival, hired local artists to paint murals and even hosted a songwriting contest to get the word out. Th ese eff orts also connected the local community to the issue and emphasized how even in a very urban area like Los Angeles, people can make a huge diff erence for wildlife. Last April’s ceremony began with a blessing from Chumash and Tataviam Elder Alan Salazar and featured hip-hop artist Warren Dickson performing songs about wildlife. Aft er speeches from a variety of people—including the biologist who “Together, we have done the near impossible as we break ground on the wildlife crossing.” – Beth Pratt
56 NATIONAL WILDLIFE . WINTER 2023 CULLEN WHITMORE NEW PODCAST NOW AIRING GROWING A MORE EQUITABLE FUTURE Within a day of meeting for the fi rst time in September 2021, Kaila Drayton (right) and Nicole Litwiller (left ) knew they wanted to do a podcast together. Litwiller had just started as an Equity and Justice Storytelling Fellow at the Federation, and Drayton—NWF’s vice president of operations—wanted to get to know her. When they met, they discussed how Litwiller could tell the story of the Federation’s equity and justice journey—and the podcast “Seeds of Culture Change” was born. “One of the fi rst things we agreed on was that we weren’t going to paint a rosy picture of NWF, particularly around equity and justice,” says Drayton. “I don’t just want to hear about the wins. I want to know about what didn’t work and how to handle that.” Historically, the conservation movement has tended to be insular and exclusionary, serving the interests of white, male conservationists and not allowing space for diverse perspectives. While in recent years there have been eff orts to shift the conversation to become more equitable, those eff orts haven’t been without missteps. “Seeds of Culture Change” recognizes this dynamic—as well as NWF’s participation in that traditional culture—and doesn’t shy away from such uncomfortable topics. Th roughout the 10-episode series, the podcast explores obstacles to the success of NWF’s equity and justice work, including an unwillingness by the “old guard” to change its ways and the burden of equity work being placed on employees from marginalized groups. While these issues can be diffi cult to talk about, discussing them is an integral part of working through them and coming to a place of better understanding. “We talk about accountability, healing and repair, and our conversations are very candid,” says Drayton. “We can’t pretend like it never happened. You have to reconcile with the past in order to move forward.” In the series, Drayton and Litwiller interview NWF employees who have witnessed fi rsthand problems within the organization and the growth that has taken place. Th ese interviews, from longtime and new employees, give context and history. Just a few years ago, for example, NWF’s equity and justice work was done on a volunteer basis, with employees taking on the burden of additional work outside their normal roles. Now, NWF’s Equity and Justice team—led by Chanté Coleman—has six full-time employees and a dedicated budget. Ensuring that this work is properly resourced is an important step toward making equity and justice a seamless part of organizational culture. In the fi nal episode, Drayton, Litwiller and their guests refl ect on what they’ve learned and on the future of the organization. “’What does your dream NWF look like?’ Th at’s what we used as a starting point,” says Litwiller. “You can’t create a future that you haven’t already imagined.” You can fi nd “Seeds of Culture Change” wherever you get podcasts or at natwild.life/seeds-of-change. donor spotlight Why donor Jim Jenkins cares about conservation “When I was a kid visiting the Adirondacks, you could never see any moose. Now, there’s a resurgence of the population, which is really exciting. I get a charge when I see a moose. There’s so much bad news on the environmental front, so to see on the ground that the trend can be positive makes you feel less hopeless.” Seeds of Culture Change
NWF.ORG/NW 57 next generation MEGAN HARWELL MEGAN HARWELL NEW IDEAS IN CONSERVATION A s conservationists, we often focus on the wildlife component of conservation without taking the human part into account. But for people like Megan Harwell, the National Wildlife Federation’s Community Partnerships Fellow, understanding human behavior is key to the success of any wildlife conservation effort. While working remotely as a communication coach, Harwell had the opportunity to travel the world (above, in Colombia), becoming interested in how different communities take stewardship over wildlife. “I began looking at the human element within conservation,” says Harwell, “at behaviors and attitudes, how you get people to conserve and how you build empathy.” Such questions led Harwell to pursue conservation psychology, a burgeoning field of science that focuses on the relationships between humans and wildlife. Now in graduate school at Antioch University New England in New Hampshire, she has designed her own conservation psychology major, taking classes on a variety of subjects such as Indigenous knowledge systems, education and outreach and evaluating conservation programs. In her role as a fellow, Harwell is assessing how NWF partners with communities and looks for opportunities to improve these relationships. In a field as rapidly changing as conservation, she says, understanding how to inspire stewardship over wildlife is an invaluable tool to save wildlife—and ourselves. “I believe in creating a world that is safe and equitable for everyone, including historically marginalized groups.”
58 NATIONAL WILDLIFE . WINTER 2023 footprint © 2016 HARRY FONSECA COLLECTION, AUTRY MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST, COURTESY OF THE EITELJORG MUSEUM OF AMERICAN INDIANS AND WESTERN ART, INDIANAPOLIS Th e late artist Harry Fonseca drew heavily from his Indigenous heritage as part of the Nisenan Maidu People in California to create paintings of the Native American hero Coyote, renowned as a trickster and creator. In this 1979 work, Coyote wears a traditional feathered cape as he walks through falling snow. “I fi nd it playful, whimsical, even magical,” says Dorene Red Cloud, curator of Native American art at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, where Fonseca was a 2005 Contemporary Art Fellow. “Th is painting reminds me of the specialness of the season, when we loved winter as kids.” She hopes viewers will feel that same sense of wonder. ■ Coyote and Snow ART BY HARRY FONSECA
National Wildlife magazine's 52nd annual photo contest opens January 18! Cash prizes and publication for winners in nine categories GRAND PRIZE: $5,000 CALL FOR ENTRIES NATIONAL WILDLIFE¨ PHOTO CONTEST NATURE S WITNESS nwf.org/photocontest MARIE LAFORGE JANUARY 18–MARCH 26, 2023 A modest entry fee helps support the National Wildlife Federation's conservation work, so please enter your photographs—and good luck! W PHOTO CONTEST ıldlıfe . . National ®
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