Red Knots in Steepest Decline in Years, Threatening the Species’ Survival

The annual count along the Delaware Bay beaches showed another severe drop in numbers of the shorebird, whose migration is one of the longest avian journeys in the world.

The number of red knots visiting the Delaware Bay beaches during this spring’s northbound migration unexpectedly dropped to its lowest since tallies began almost 40 years ago, deepening concern about the shorebird’s survival and dealing a sharp setback to a quarter-century of efforts to save it. Conservationists found fewer than 7,000 of the bird’s rufa subspecies during extensive counts on land, air and water on the New Jersey and Delaware sides of the bay during May. The number is about a third of that found in 2020; less than a quarter of the levels in the previous two years; and the lowest since the early 1980s when the population was about 90,000. Numbers were already well below the level that would ensure the bird’s survival. An earlier decline had been halted by years of conservation efforts, including a ban by New Jersey on the harvesting of horseshoe crabs, whose eggs provide essential food for the birds on their long-distance migrations.