By JAMES M. ONEILL

AP FILE PHOTO

A red knot, center, feeds among ruddy turnstones and sanderlings along the Delaware Bay shoreline in Middle Township, N.J.

The red knot, a migratory shore bird that stops along beaches in New Jersey to fatten up for the last leg of its yearly journey, has been declared threatened by the federal government under the Endangered Species Act.

Since the 1980s, the red knot population has plummeted by about 75 percent, due to loss of habitat from coastal development and a significant drop in horseshoe crabs whose eggs the red knot eats to fuel its 9,000-mile spring migration from the southern tip of South America to breeding sites in the Canadian Arctic.

The bird was already declared endangered by New Jersey, but the new federal listing could provide more financial resources to projects that restore red knot habitat, federal officials said. The listing also means that federal agencies must take into consideration the impact on red knots when involved in projects that affect the birds habitat.

Using the best scientific studies available, we have indication the red knot will likely be in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future, Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Monday when announcing the listing. The agency oversees the endangered species program.

As part of the listing process, over the next year the agency will conduct an assessment of critical habitat essential for the red knots survival on the Atlantic Coast, including beaches along Delaware Bay where about 50,000 birds feed on horseshoe crab eggs each spring. The report on critical habitat should be ready in a year.

The red knot is an amazing creature, with one of these mystical, magical migrations, Ashe said. The oldest known red knot, aged 21, has accumulated enough miles over its marathon migrations to have flown to the moon and halfway back.

The red knot population declined through the 1980s and 1990s as Delaware Bay horseshoe crabs were overharvested. The crab has been used as farm fertilizer, as bait for eel and conch traps, and for its blue blood, which has a clotting agent used by the drug industry.

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US names red knot bird a threatened species