A wetland in Jiangsu province – a
vital stopover for the spoon-billed sandpiper on its migration south from
Siberia – needs protecting against development, one of a number of threats to a
species with under 250 breeding pairs left
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 18 November,
2017, 6:18pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 18 November,
2017, 7:11pm
18 Nov 2017
Pavel Tomkovich spent the summer
300 kilometres below the Arctic Circle in Chukotka, an isolated coastal region
of northeastern Siberia. Each day he packed hand-held flares and a pepper spray
as protection against bears, and set off into the wilderness in search of a
critically endangered bird – the spoon-billed sandpiper.
Tomkovich, head of the
ornithological department of Moscow State University’s Zoological Museum, is
part of the international Spoon-Billed Sandpiper Taskforce, involving Russia,
China and a number of other countries fighting to save the species from
extinction. With numbers falling from an estimated 1,000 breeding pairs at the
turn of the millennium to fewer than 250 pairs in 2014, the taskforce is hoping
efforts will lead to a 50 per cent increase in the population by 2025.
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