Mike Kilburn
Committee Member
BBS God
Posts: 334
|
 |
new Black-faced Spoonbill site in Hainan
« on: Jan 9th, 2004, 9:13pm » |
 Quote  Modify
|
Jemi and Mike K joined the Hainan Forestry Bureau (HFB) provincial waterbirds survey from 29 Dec - 5 Jan on behalf of HKBWS at the invitation of Kadoorie Farm.
The big highlight of the survey was the discovery of 47 BFS and one Eurasian Spoonbill near Sigeng in western Hainan - a new site for the species.
This number is about 4% of the currently known global population of around 1,200 and would qualify the site for Ramsar status as a wetland of international importance (must regularly support at least 1% of the global population).
the discovery was down to careful planning of the sites for study by HFB and the survey team including Dr Laing Wei and BFS spoonbill researcher Dr Zhang.
This news was reported a few days ago in Ming Pao.
It is a great example of how HKBWS can cooperate with other local and Chinese organisations to support conservation.
It is not too surprising to find these birds as Hainan lies between the Pearl River Delta wintering population (Deep Bay & Macau) and the Vietnam wintering population.
Around 40 wetland sites were covered many of which looked very good, but suffer from intense human disturbance from fishermen and shellfish collectors.
BFS were at 2 other sites - 1 at Dong Zhai Gang national nature reserve nr Haikou in N Hainan and 10 more at Lin Gao County Nature Reserve, which had been seen 6 weeks earlier.
Cheers
Mike K
|
BBS
Help
Search
Members
Login
Register
Reply
Send Topic
Print
Author
Logged