Migratory bird numbers decline
Print Edition
COASTAL developments in northeast Asia are threatening the survival of Australian migratory shorebirds, a study has found, with some species experiencing population declines of up to 75 percent over the last two decades.
Some 36 migratory shorebird species, numbering between 3 to 8 million, fly to Australia each summer from breeding sites in the Russian and Alaskan Arctic.
They stop at tidal flats in China and North and South Korea to refuel during their 20,000-kilometer annual journey.
But the destruction of those habitats has seen a marked decline in the population of such birds, including the eastern curlew and the curlew sandpiper, said conservation biologist Nick Murray.
“Each year there have been fewer and fewer shorebirds seen in Australia,” Murray, from the University of New South Wales, said of the changes that prompted the study into the Yellow Sea tidal flats, which was published in the journal Austral Ecology this month.
“We use satellite remote sensing to look at the changes in the habitats around the Yellow Sea region — which is northeastern China, North Korea and South Korea — and found that about 65 percent of those habitats that shorebirds use have been destroyed over the last 50 years.”
Some of the intertidal habitats have been transformed into industrial and agricultural lands, the study found.
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