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Generational Capital . Delaware Bay 2011

by Larry Niles
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The month of May on Delaware Bay was a whirlwind of fieldwork and activities that left our team of scientists beleaguered and ready for rest.  It’s hard to remember that the season started early with a celebration of the Bay’s designation as a site of Hemispheric importance to shorebirds.  The designation conferred by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network is especially important because it now includes 84 sites, and Delaware Bay remains to this day one of the, if not the most, important sites for shorebirds in the US.  Former Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson speaking at the WHRSN celebration of the Delaware Bay stopover for shorebirds. He compared the natural wealth of this bay as Generational Equity that must be bequeathed in tack to our children. (Photo by Diego Luna) 

There was much to celebrate in this one-day event, the food, the sail on the tall ship Meerwald, and the many speakers including former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.  Surprisingly, Secretary Paulson is an avid birder and ardent supporter of conservation.  Most people know he was once chair of Goldman Saks, the infamous investment house that is the subject of a number of features including PBS Frontlines’ Inside the Meltdown, the documentary Inside Job, and the HBO movie Too Big to Fail           (where William Hurt played Secretary Paulson). Few people know that Secretary Paulson was also the chair of the Nature Conservancy.  While there,he helped broker a deal that led to the protection of nearly 680,000 acres of land in southern section of Tierra del Fuego, Chile, now administered by the Wildlife Conservation Society.  The site known as Karukinka is a beautiful tract of virgin southern beech forest at the end of the Southern Andes, and not far from Bahia Lomas where we do our work on red knots.

Secretary Paulson spoke of the need for us to think about natural resources as “generational capital” or natural wealth we ought to bequeath to our children.  He pointed out that spending our natural wealth in unsustainable activities, as we are on Delaware Bay,  is as irresponsible as carelessly spending the financial wealth of our nation.  In both cases we are leaving our children poorer.

Although Secretary Paulson was the keynote speaker he seemed, in retrospect, to be an opener for a more humble but no less powerful speech by a precocious ninth grader, Mike Hudson. Mike Hudson asking the adults to act and save shorebirds so that his generation can experience the complexity and beauty of shorebirds and the bay too. (photo by Diego Luna)

Mike leads the Friends of the Red Knot, a small group of youth concerned about the red knot.   He began and ended his speech with a heart-felt request to all the adults– don’t let these animals disappear because we can’t or won’t find a way to stop greed and shortsightedness from prevailing.  The beauty and wonder of this place deserves to be passed on to future generations.  Protection is only fair.

Unfortunately his request is not being heard by the people who love birds.   It’s been reported here and elsewhere that red knots have suffered a major new decline, nearly 30% in one year.   Worse, biologists have documented similar declines in other Arctic nesting shorebirds like the turnstone and semi-palmated sandpiper.  Mike and his sister Emily want to hold an equity position in this red knot.All of this despite 15 years of hard-nosed conservation largely undermined by a fishery agency that cannot or will not manage horseshoe crabs for the sake of shorebirds and people.   Because of this, a whole suite of arctic-nesting species, like the red knot, cling precariously to survival.  The big question for the people who love birds is why are we allowing the rapid withdrawal of natural capital without regard to future generations?

 

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