18:32,
11-Feb-2019
Alok
Gupta
One of
the world's rarest migratory birds, barely a few steps away from extinction --
Spoon-billed Sandpiper -- has been sighted at various coastal areas in China.
Around 26
individuals were spotted at seven protected areas of southern China, a joint
survey by the Mangrove Conservation Foundation (MCF) and Center for East Asian
Australasian Flyway Studies (CEAAF), completed early last month, found.
Declared
critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN), less than 650 Spoon-billed Sandpipers survive in various parts of the
world.
Tiny in
size, these birds undertake an annual marathon migration of 7,000 kilometers to
breed. En route to their breeding grounds, they make a three-month stopover at
Tiaozini mudflats in east China's Jiangsu Province to moult -- a process of
replacing wing feathers -- before continuing their journey to
Russia.
According
to the survey, 13 birds were sighted in the Leizhou Peninsula located at
the southernmost tip of the Chinese mainland.
One
Spoon-billed Sandpiper each was spotted in Yangjiang City in south China's
Guangdong Province, Beihai City in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region and Zhao'an County in east China's Fujian
Province.
Six birds
were seen in the Chinese coastal city of Fangchenggang, southwest
China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Two birds
each were observed in east China's Fujian Minjiang delta and Qinzhou City
in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
"The
sighting covers about 3.7 percent of the bird's total population. Such a large
presence of Spoon-billed Sandpiper is due to China's ban on reclamation that
has revived its wintering ground," Yifei Jia, a post-doctoral researcher
with the School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, told CGTN.
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