Upper tidal flats are disproportionately important for the conservation of migratory shorebirds

Abstract

Migratory animals play vital ecological roles in ecosystems worldwide, yet many species are threatened by human activities. Understanding the detailed patterns of habitat use throughout the migration cycle is critical to developing effective conservation strategies for these species. Migratory shorebirds undertake some of the longest known migrations, but they are also declining precipitously worldwide. To better understand the dynamics of shorebird declines along the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, we quantified the spatiotemporal foraging distribution of 17 migratory shorebirds at two critical stopover sites. We found that shorebirds exhibit substantial interspecific and site-specific differences in their foraging distributions. Notwithstanding these differences, however, the upper tidal flats appear to be especially important to most shorebirds by providing more than 70% of the birds' cumulative foraging time, twofold greater than their proportional area. Because the upper tidal flats are also more prone to coastal development, our findings may help to explain why shorebird populations along the flyway have declined much faster than the overall rate of tidal flat loss. Our work highlights the importance of protecting upper tidal flats to conserve migratory shorebirds and demonstrates the value of a detailed ecological understanding of habitat usage by migratory animals for conservation planning.

Building for Nature: Preserving Threatened Bird Habitat in Port Design

“…This species difference resembles visual observations in areas along the Jiangsu coasts [5,25]. While the mid-range littoral zone is important for these species, the other zones occurring in its proximity are also important.…”

“…As such, the development of the Jiangsu coastal zone is part of the national development strategy and include plans to develop two new deep sea ports at Jianggang and Tongzhou Bay on the southern Jiangsu coast [23]. However, this coastline provides key intertidal habitats for many shorebird species in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway [5,24,25], and the proposed development of Tongzhou Bay would strongly interfere with the habitat required by migratory shorebirds [5]. In 2013, construction on the first phase, the Tongzhou Bay port at the Yaosha-Lengjiasha shoals, was started [26].…”

“…They are widely distributed in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway and previous studies have established their dependence on the Yellow Sea for refuel during their migration [11,32]. Moreover, they have different habitat and diet requirements, with the Great Knot mainly feeding on hard-shelled molluscs [33,34] and the Bar-tailed Godwit feeding on a variety of prey including polychaete worms, molluscs and crustaceans [25,[35][36][37]. The ecotope use of these two species can be illustrative for which ecotopes are important for approximately 30 other shorebird species that occur at the Jiangsu coast (see [5,8,24]).…”

Tracking the migration of red‐necked stint Calidris ruficollis reveals marathon flights and unexpected conservation challenges

“…The absence of large, concentrated staging sites for red‐necked stints may stem from more generalized diet and/or habitat use patterns of this species (Mu and Wilcove 2020), relative to other shorebirds. Individual stints from the same or different breeding areas probably use different sets of staging sites, as opposed to birds from these different breeding sites all moving and mixing in shorter hops through a sequence of staging sites along the China coast (Fig.…”

Temporal variations of large wading birds in the Point Calimere Wildlife Sanctuary, Tamil Nadu, India

“…The abundance and distribution of waterbirds mostly depend on the quality of wetlands (10) . In addition to that, the waterbirds are one of the good bioindicators and which is facilitating to the exploration of various environmental problems (11) . Since the wetlands are providing sufficient energy for the various species of waterbirds the wetlands are attracting migratory and resident bird species waterbirds (12) .…”