GCA Mission

The GCA founders believe that acting to protect biodiversity is a worthy cause and that working to right an anthropogenic wrong via environmentally responsible intervention is many times a valid response. For the Red Knots we need more horseshoe crab eggs. On the political and educational fronts we need to publicize the Red Knot – horseshoe crab ecology and our part in its deterioration in order to avoid or stall similar abuses in the future. We want to champion these two species, not only focusing attention on them to avoid the extinction of a race of an exceptional trans hemispheric migrant, but to give scale to the realization that people's momentary lack of forethought and respect can have devastating consequences that may last a very long time, perhaps forever.

The focus of GCA's Red Knot Survival Project is very narrow: we want shorebirds using Delaware Bay as a migration stopover site to leave for the Arctic with enough fat reserves to have an optimum chance of surviving the flight and raising a brood to increase their population numbers and thus exceed the depressed current levels which put the very species at risk of extinction. We want more horseshoe crab eggs on the beach, so the birds can consume enough to fuel their northward flights - whatever that takes, as long as the solution is environmentally sound.

"Global Conservation Alliance:  The intricate web of plants and animals has already shrunk in geometric proportion to the the number of species now extinct.  The 21st century is rolling along --- surely we know by now what will happen to human beings, and to this earth, if we don't enlarge our perspective to include the protection of species other than our own.

This is a letter of support for the Red Knot Survival Project.  We human beings are smart enough to find a solution which will address the long-term needs of all concerned: the red knot, the horseshoe crab, and the fishermen --- if only we will.  Qui veut peut.  Let us hope that our signature style as human beings ceases to allow one species after another to slip into extinction.. We support the Red Knot Survival Project.

Tanny Keeler and Kent Hodgetts, Santa Barbara CA"