History

The original concept for protected “sister parks” linking key sites for shorebirds throughout their range sprang from aerial shorebird surveys of coastal South America undertaken by Guy Morrison and Ken Ross of the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS), and from the International Shorebird Surveys coordinated by Brian Harrington of Manomet (then the Manomet Bird Observatory). George Finney, then Morrison’s supervisor at CWS, proposed a voluntary network approach. The concept was further developed by Morrison and other researchers including J.P Myers, first at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and then at National Audubon Society.

Myers and Pete McLain (New Jersey Department of Fish, Game and Wildlife) presented the concept of a network of sites for shorebirds to the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA, then the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies) in 1984. AFWA adopted the concept and together with World Wildlife Fund-US began to advance the network, now formally named WHSRN. This brought the concept to the attention of wildlife managers across North America. Other organizations soon joined, including National Audubon Society, CWS, and Manomet. McLain, in his role as Assistant Director of NJ Fish and Game, was pivotal to getting Delaware Bay nominated as the first WHSRN site, and it was dedicated as such at a ceremony on May 21, 1986.