The known history of the Hooded Grebe starts in 1974 when, almost by accident, renowned Argentinian naturalist Mauricio Rumboll discovered it at Los Escarchados Lake in the south-west corner of Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia. Rumboll found the new species to be one of the most colourful and striking grebes in the world, with a spectacular courtship display to rival that of its more famous cousin, Great Crested Grebe. Today, Hooded Grebe has become a symbol for conservation in Patagonia thanks to the hard work of dozens of researchers and conservationists, along with several institutions.

When it was first discovered, numerous studies were launched, and by the end of the 1980s its breeding range was well known and its population estimated to be between 3,000 and 5,000 fertile adults – not bad for a species that, only a few years earlier, had been described as doomed to a ‘natural’ extinction. Based on the knowledge generated during that period, by the beginning of the 1990s it was categorised as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. In 1997, an IUCN report concluded: “No major actions need to be taken to protect the Hooded Grebe, as its remote and hostile environment naturally protects it, and there is no risk of humans reaching the area to harm it.”

Decline and fall

Sadly, human impact reached farther than expected. During the early 2000s, concerns about the species started to increase. Naturalists and birders had more and more trouble finding it, both at its breeding and wintering sites. In 2003, the first potentially negative factor affecting its habitat was detected: trout production in its breeding lakes at Strobel Plateau. In 2009, local conservation groups Aves Argentinas and Ambiente Sur started to turn their focus towards the grebe. In 2011 they created the Hooded Grebe Project with the support of the National Science and Technology Council, the Neotropical Bird Club and BirdLife International.

Since 2010, the Hooded Grebe Project has been tirelessly monitoring the species, making records of its distribution, population trends and threats. The most shocking result is that the species’ population currently numbers just 750 breeding adults – an 80% plummet since the 1980s. Many questions arise, but the most important one is: what caused such a massive population collapse in only a few decades?

One of the greatest threats is something that affects all of the planet’s biodiversity, along with humanity itself: climate change. Its impacts can be seen in the incredibly fast reduction in the number of lakes available for the grebes to breed in. Aided and abetted by climate change, three invasive species have also arrived in Hooded Grebe habitat, each one directly impacting the grebe at a different point in its life cycle.

By Kini Roesler, Co-ordinator of the Patagonia Programme, Aves Argentinas

Above: in 2017, a video of Hooded Grebe’s otherworldly courtship display went viral on social media, raising awareness and funds. Photo © Ignazi Gonzalo

Freshwater fish such as salmon and trout are a major draw for recreational fishers, and generate significant tourism revenue for the local community. This isn’t necessarily a problem, as recreational fishers are mostly on the lookout for large lakes and rivers, where Hooded Grebe does not breed. Unfortunately, due to a combination of bad management and lack of knowledge, these fish have also been stocked into smaller lakes of huge importance to the grebes.

Rainbow trout, the most common intruder, has an enormous impact at the environmental level. This fish changes the entire food chain, eating up freshwater invertebrates that the grebe usually feeds on, and probably affecting water conditions, preventing the growth of Milfoil. This is the only aquatic plant in these lakes, and is an essential material for the Hooded Grebe to build its floating nests.

Although native to Patagonia, Kelp Gull has only recently arrived at the highland plateaus, enabled by debris left behind by human activity, such as animal carcasses, landfill sites and discards from fisheries. This is why it is considered to be ‘neo-native’, or a native invasive species. But while its invasive status is nuanced, its impact is concrete: it preys on colonies during the egg-laying phase, a critical moment in the life cycle of any species. A single gull has been recorded destroying a colony of 30+ nests in less than 45 minutes, devouring dozens of eggs and chicks in a single gluttonous session.

Unwelcome guest

The final, but perhaps most acute, of all threats is American Mink. Mink are an invasive species brought in from North America in the early 20th century for fur production, in an attempt to boost Patagonia’s economic development. This predator can attack grebes at any stage in their life cycle, even as adults. This represents a huge problem, since Hooded Grebe has a ‘live slow, die old’ evolutionary strategy. Adults produce young slowly over a long stretch of years, usually raising just one chick at a time, and sometimes skipping years altogether when conditions are not perfect. As a result, losing a single fertile adult has a devastating impact on future numbers.

To make matters worse, in its natural environment Hooded Grebe’s only predators are birds of prey such as Peregrine Falcon and Cinereous Harrier. It has never before encountered swimming mammal predators, and therefore has no instinct to avoid mink. We have registered several cases in which more than 20 individuals were attacked by just one mink. Our most tragic record is 33 individuals killed in just one night, in an area which is now part of Patagonia National Park.

Since 2012, the Hooded Grebe Project has been taking action to tackle all of these threats. Highlights include controlling American Mink and gulls at key colonies, removing trout from important breeding lakes, and trials with windbreaks and artificial nesting platforms to reduce the impact of strong winds. As an insurance measure, we have also started to implement a captive rearing program to recover eggs that have been abandoned by their parents or left behind after a colony has been destroyed. Hooded Grebe parents tend to lay two eggs, but ignore one of them when the first chick hatches, meaning there is a ready supply of ‘spare’ eggs. Releasing captive-reared fledglings is very much a last resort, but they may be useful for strengthening wild populations once the main threats have been addressed.

Encouragingly, the loss of adults – one of the most worrying factors – has been substantially reduced and we have even managed to increase the colonies’ reproductive success, almost doubling it, thanks to the hard work of ‘Colony Guardians’ – trained technicians who watch over the nests and intervene in the event of mink and gull attacks. This has not only stabilised the overall population, but slightly increased it. However, in conservation, the rule is always to stay alert: for three years from 2018–2020, there were no breeding events whatsoever due to changes in climate conditions, which prevented the blooming of milfoil and blew away any nests that the grebes did attempt to make.

“Our most tragic record is 33 Hooded Grebes killed by American Mink in one night.”

Kini Roesler, Co-ordinator of the Patagonia Programme, Aves Argentinas

Fortunately, in 2021 the team installed 20 floating platforms at a key breeding lake, Estancia Lago Strobel. These platforms are anchored to the bottom of the lakes to avoid them being carried away by the wind and have been covered with natural milfoil for grebes to build their nests on. Grebes quickly accepted the platforms and started behaving as they would in a natural breeding colony: climbing on to the platforms, courting around them, mating and adding further milfoil to them. All these busy activities give hope that we will soon to see grebes laying and incubating eggs on these artificial platforms.

Elsewhere, the adult population is stable and simply waiting for better weather conditions to raise its young. This makes it even more important to carry on removing invasive species, so that the habitat is as perfect as possible when the birds decide to breed again.

The show must go on

The future of Hooded Grebe is full of new challenges, some of them bigger than ever. A pair of giant hydroelectric dams currently under construction on the Santa Cruz River presents an unknown threat, as their impact on the species and its winter habitat has not yet been discovered. This is why are we are currently analysing potential risks and how they could be tackled.

Nonetheless, conservation efforts certainly seem to be having positive impacts on Hooded Grebe’s populations, so this is no time to give up the fight. Now that we are beginning to make an impact, we need to forge on harder than ever.

But something even more positive has resulted from this project. Even though the species is not yet as famous as the Giant Panda, its image has become well known and today – locally, regionally and internationally – it is a flagship species for the conservation of Patagonia’s biodiversity. In this way, it works as an umbrella species: by protecting Hooded Grebe habitat, we also protect the homes of other threatened or declining species such as Austral Rail (Vulnerable) or Torrent Duck, and even mammals such as Wolffsohn´s Vizcacha – a rabbit-like rodent in the chinchilla family – or Southern River Otter.

Hooded Grebe is also responsible for the creation of Patagonia National Park and the establishment of the Juan Mazar Barnett Biological Station. In this way, this resplendent bird has become the true guardian of Patagonia’s steppes.

A prized collaboration by the artist Tawaraya Sōtatsu and calligrapher Hon’ami Kōetsu, Anthology with Cranes, is held in the Kyoto Museum of Art. A scroll, the work is almost 14 m in length, and the cranes – beautifully rendered in gold and silver – stand and fly, alone and in flocks. Dating from the 17th century, the piece is revered as a celebration of Sōtatsu and Kōetsu’s friendship, and because of the core role cranes play in Japanese and wider Asian culture. With simple elegant lines Sōtatsu fills the space with the effervescent energy cranes always seem to express.

Taken more than 400 years later, David Tipling’s wonderful image of Red-crowned Cranes Grus japonensis dancing and bugling, their breath catching the sun and condensing in the chill air of Hokkaido island, captures an ageless scene. Only the sound is missing, of course, though listening to recordings on the Xeno-canto website allow a sense of how the sight, calls and movements of these remarkable birds has flooded people’s imaginations for as long as we have shared common ground.

Although Red-crowned Cranes remain Vulnerable to extinction, the story of their recovery on Hokkaido and the development of the marshes at Kushiro as a national park has been a major success. Fewer than 20 resident birds were present in the 1920s, but numbers have now grown to an average annual population of over 1,500. The Wild Bird Society of Japan (BirdLife Partner) has played a key role in supporting action for the cranes and opened a visitor centre at the Tsurui-Ito Tancho Sanctuary in 1987 – an Important Bird & Biodiversity Area and popular site with ecotourists. The close interweave of natural and cultural values in Japan has played a key role in creating momentum.

Above: An extract from Anthology with Cranes, 17th century, by painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu and calligrapher Hon’ami Kōetsu

Few of us who have held paper have not, at some stage, folded a bird, or some bird-form, a pair of wings, and flown them, literally, or with arms whirling to create the magic of flight. Cranes are core to origami, and the tradition of folding a 1,000, or senzaburu, dates back to a Confucian belief that they could live to be 1,000 years old. To fold so many is to conjure up the long-standing association between these remarkable birds, longevity, happiness and good fortune.

Cranes are also closely associated with peace in Japan. In 1955, a schoolgirl named Sadako Sasaki, who had miraculously survived the atomic bomb which had devasted Hiroshima a decade earlier, fell ill with leukaemia. When a school friend visited her hospital bed bearing a gift of origami paper, she also told Sadako of senzaburu and its association with good fortune. Determined to recover, Sadako began to fold cranes, and reputedly reached 644 before succumbing to the relentless radiation cancer.

Her story soon spread, and schoolchildren from all around Japan and overseas gave money to build a monument in her memory at the Hiroshima Peace Park. A small bell hangs there, donated by the first Japanese Nobel Laureate, Hideki Yukawa. People still hang paper cranes below the bell, both to celebrate Sadako’s life, and the enduring association between cranes and peace.

Roger Benson’s latest paper features a feathered, chicken-sized, bird-like dinosaur revealed to have the hearing ability to rival a barn owl – a specialised nocturnal predator. Combined with short, muscular arms ending in a single giant claw for digging, Shuvuuia deserti (meaning ‘desert bird’) is not what you might classically expect from a dinosaur. Such are the revelations from fossil discoveries in recent decades that are changing how we see birds today. Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford, Roger researches the evolution of dinosaurs – including bird origins – and large-scale evolutionary patterns. He explains why ‘dinosaur’ is more ‘incredible bird’ than ‘terrible lizard’…

Are birds really dinosaurs? Is it disputed?

There’s no longer really any doubt that birds are a type of dinosaur. These days, the debate is about details. The strong evidence doesn’t just come from fossilised bones and similarities found across the skeleton, but from fossilised soft tissue – especially feathers. Many dinosaurs had not just some kind of body covering, but distinctive bird-like feathers. Rare fossils also give us glimpses of the behaviour of bird-like dinosaurs, such as Mei long, a small, duck-sized bipedal dinosaur from the Cretaceous era. It was found preserved in volcanic ash falls – a bit like Pompeii – captured curled up in a sleeping position very similar to how a lot of birds roost today.

If feathers evolved in dinosaurs, what is the origin of birds?

Birds belong to the theropod group of dinosaurs that included T. rex. Theropods are all bipedal and some of them share more bird-like features than others. Archaeopteryx, discovered in 1861, was for a long time the only truly bird-like dinosaur – it’s from the Late Jurassic era (150 million years ago). Others closely related to birds, like Velociraptor, can be from the Late Cretaceous (100-66 million years ago), so they’d also had a lot of time to evolve independently. It’s the Late Jurassic where we start finding really interesting, distinctive, bird-like dinosaurs – especially with recent fossils from China preserved in fine-grain sediments from lake beds.

Such as?

Anchiornis is a Late Jurassic winged dinosaur, with large feather arrays on its legs. Fossils like this suggest the intriguing possibility that birds evolved from a gliding ancestor that had effectively four wings. That is cool. Also, Yi qi was discovered in the last couple of years. Its fossil has preserved soft tissue with a bat-like wing membrane.

Could they fly?

Not all of the dinosaurian close relatives of birds could fly. But those that could, flew in a range of different ways – suggesting early evolutionary experiments of flight, with birds being the most successful of those experiments, and persisting to the present.

Were the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park covered in feathers?

We can confidently think of Velociraptor as having a bird-like feather covering, even though its fossils only preserve the bones. The skeleton has quill knobs on the ulna (wing bone – also found on today’s birds). Close relatives are better-preserved and show a complete body covering, ranging from down to quill feathers. They couldn’t fly, so the feathers could be to do with display. Reconstructions have moved on a bit since Jurassic Park… Artists have only recently let go of scaly, reptilian-like depictions. We can think of dinosaurs as more bird-like than reptile-like.

Above: an artist’s interpretation of Shuvuuia deserti, which means ‘desert bird’
© Viktor Radermacher

Were they warm-blooded?

For dinosaurs closest to birds – or, in fact, dinosaurs in general – we have so much evidence that suggests they were warm-blooded, short of actually sticking a thermometer in one. Growth rates and insulation are the smoking gun. They grow fast – we know from cutting up bones – faster than reptiles (including those from the same period), but not quite as fast as modern birds or mammals. For theropods where we can see soft tissue, we can see insulating feathers. All dinosaurs were on the road to becoming warm-blooded, with steps towards faster metabolic rates and very high body temperatures somewhat after the origin of birds. There wouldn’t have been a sluggish T. rex waiting for prey to walk by; we should think of them as active, curious animals.

What would you say to people that would say birds aren’t dinosaurs?

If birds aren’t dinosaurs, then we have no idea what they are. Birds share so many features with theropods and there are no other candidate fossil groups. When you understand that birds are a type of dinosaur, that the evidence has stacked up, everything starts to make more sense. Birds inherit their bipedalism from theropods, explaining why they evolved flight using just their forelimbs, unlike bats or pterosaurs. If that hypothesis was wrong, we’d expect to be just as uncertain about bird origins today as 30 years ago.

But didn’t Triceratops, from a completely distant group of dinosaurs, have a beak?

Many groups have lost teeth and evolved a beak. Triceratops had a beak at the front of the mouth. Sheep also lack teeth at the front in their upper jaw. That’s for grabbing vegetation, and evolves frequently.

Is flight the key to the origin of birds, then?

Palaeontologists ask ‘what makes Archaeopteryx a fossil bird rather than another bird-like dinosaur?’, and it’s the capability of powered flight. The wing feather arrangement is much more similar to modern birds. But the more we know about bird-like dinosaurs, the more we find that specific features of birds have an older origin. Walking on two legs, having feathers, laying eggs, warm bloodedness – they’re just inherited features from dinosaurs.

How did powered flight begin in bird-like dinosaurs?

Not everyone agrees, but many think they were tree-climbing animals that glided. I think they evolved flight from the trees down. From an aerodynamic perspective it’s easier to see how that would work. To evolve flight from the ground up, evolution would need to master a number of different things about flight control and power quickly. That’s more difficult. When did they learn to climb trees? We would like to know!

“There wouldn’t have been a sluggish T. rex waiting for prey to walk by; we should think of them as active, curious animals.”

Professor Roger Benson

Why were birds the only dinosaurs that survived the mass extinction at the end of Cretaceous?

We know from the fossil record that large-bodied land animals were hit hard. Only the tiny survived. The smallest dinosaurs weighed about 500 g, but to survive as a land mammal you needed to weigh less than 50 g, and even then the chances were very slim. Lots of bird groups also went extinct. All sorts of reasons have been suggested – such as being a seed-eater or fish-eater (after the 10-km diameter meteor struck, there was a lack of sunlight due to dust, and freshwater ecosystems were a refuge). Some places would have been less terrible than others – clearly proximity to the impact zone in Mexico would have been terrible – but there were global effects.

Will only small animals survive the current sixth mass extinction and the bird declines BirdLife scientists are monitoring today?

We know from the fossil record that mass extinctions happen, but each one has a different cause and pattern. So we can’t predict what will happen next based on past mass extinctions. It’s much better to look at what’s happening to birds and other animals right now. The extinction of the dinosaurs is the most abrupt – it could have happened in a single year. The current mass extinction seems a lot faster than some of the other mass extinction events, though, in terms of rate of decline of abundance and rate of species loss. It’s terrifying, but only if it continues. And we have some control of this if people take action.

The other lesson from mass extinctions is that the biosphere will recover. But not in our lifetimes – only on timescales that aren’t useful for human society. Some of our best fossil record studies monitor extinctions with data points every 100,000 years … So today, monitoring birds is one of the most important things we can do to catch species before they’re unknowingly lost.

Favourite bird?

I really like the Inaccessible Island Rail, the smallest flightless bird, living precariously on a tiny island. How can it be so small? It’s got something to tell us about evolution. No dinosaur had ever been that small. Islands are fascinating for an evolutionary biologist and we can’t risk losing this information from science, the sum of human knowledge. That’s just one reason why BirdLife’s work to protect island birds from introduced species is so important.

Given your expertise, how do you feel when you look at birds today?

I like watching them because I like animals and birds are some of the most visible. You can say that a pigeon’s foot is similar to a dinosaur’s – birds have inherited so much from dinosaurs but are also so distinctive in their own right. I respect that and see them doing something fundamentally different to what most dinosaurs would have done. They use resources in a way that ground-walking animals can’t. At any one time there were probably only about 1,000 species of dinosaur on earth, whereas birds have taken what they’ve inherited from dinosaurs and done a lot more with it, giving rise to an enormous diversity of 11,000 species. People love dinosaurs and people love birds. What could be more interesting?

Ding Li Yong, Flyways Coordinator, BirdLife Asia

Not far from the bustling city of Seocheon, at the mouth of the Geum estuary in South Korea, is the relatively flat island of Yubu. Except for a small, hilly, wooded area, Yubu is surrounded by vast expanses of tidal flats. Each year, several thousand Eurasian Oystercatchers of the distinctive eastern form osculans congregate in a staggering spectacle on Yubu’s shore – perhaps more than at any other wetland in eastern Asia.

Crossing to the mainland at Seocheon, the ebbing of the tide exposes intertidal flats that stretch as far as the eye can see into the Yellow Sea (or West Sea as it is known in Korea). These support a sizeable percentage of the populations of two threatened shorebirds, Far Eastern Curlew and Great Knot (both Endangered), as well as a small but steady stream in migration times of two even rarer waders, Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Critically Endangered) and Spotted Greenshank (Endangered).

The estuary of the Geum River in Seocheon county, including Yubu island, is one of four coastal wetlands inscribed in July this year by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a World Heritage Property. These sites also include well-known Suncheon Bay on the south coast, which hosts almost a third of the world population of Hooded Crane (Vulnerable), and the mudflats of Gochang and the Shinan archipelago.

The prestige that comes with UNESCO status not only embodies outstanding importance of a site for biodiversity, but also provides some of the best guarantees for good management and protection. UNESCO inscription of these four wetlands therefore marks an extremely significant milestone in the conservation of the critically important intertidal wetlands of the Yellow Sea, and confirms what the conservation community has been advocating for – that these wetlands are important at the international level.

Tragic loss

Not that long ago, the wetlands of the Yellow Sea were far from secure. In 2006, South Korea took the controversial decision to dam and reclaim a vast area of estuarine intertidal flats at Saemangeum, about 20 km south of Yubu, to boost its ailing economy. At the time, Saemangeum was recognised as the top site in Korea for migratory shorebirds – it hosted almost 95,000 Great Knot, among hundreds of thousands of other waterbirds.

The tragic loss of Saemangeum displaced large numbers of migratory waterbirds and is believed to have hastened the decline of the Great Knot in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Elsewhere in South Korea and in China’s provinces on the Yellow Sea, coastal wetlands were also increasingly being lost to aquaculture, development and the rapid expansion of infrastructure amid the region’s economic boom.

More than 30 per cent of South Korea’s intertidal flats were estimated to have disappeared between the 1980s and 2000s. And as more and more of Korea’s wetlands gave way to reclamation in the years of rapid economic growth, it became increasingly critical to preserve what remained of these coastal hotspots around the Yellow Sea.

Heart of the flyway

Straddling the eastern coast of China and the Korean Peninsula, the Yellow Sea is, after all, the beating heart of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Many of the waterbirds migrating along the flyway depend on these critical wetlands to recuperate in one way or another, including virtually every threatened shorebird using this flyway.

Sitting on the north-eastern fringe of the Yellow Sea, South Korea’s wetlands form an integral part of this coastal ecosystem. Although not as well-known as some of the sites in China, these ecosystems are nevertheless comparable in importance for migratory birds as many of China’s sites, and ecologically they complement the Chinese wetlands.

In addition to being a vital staging ground for millions of waterbirds, South Korea’s Yellow Sea coast is also where several threatened species breed, notably the Black-faced Spoonbill (Endangered), Chinese Egret and Saunders’s Gull (both Vulnerable). Not to be forgotten is the population of Spotted Seal, designated by the Korean government as a Natural Monument by its Cultural Heritage Administration.

In 2015, the South Korean government made a bid for UNESCO recognition of several Yellow Sea wetland sites. The Korean World Heritage Promotion Team, led by Dr Moon Kyong-O, worked tirelessly to consult international stakeholders and lobby for support for the nominated sites. The team reached out to experts around the world, including BirdLife International, as well as our colleagues working in the Wadden Sea in western Europe – a UNESCO ‘coast-scape’ which parallels the Korean nomination in many ways.

The battle to protect

The road towards World Heritage Site inscription was not without setbacks. The nomination and consultation process raised many issues with the way wetland sites were to be managed and zoned, as well as questions on what made them outstanding for biodiversity at the international level. The coronavirus pandemic threw another spanner in the works, causing many conversations to be delayed. However, as the 44th Session of the World Heritage Committee loomed, the international community and Korean stakeholders were quickly galvanised into action.

The Korean World Heritage Promotion team convened a technical panel of experts to look into the biological value of the four nominated sites, especially their migratory birds, in order to demonstrate to the World Heritage Committee how the site would meet its criteria for outstanding universal value. Meanwhile, members of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) were leading consultations with stakeholders and co-ordinating work to mobilise experts, bureaucrats, conservationists and local officials.

BirdLife International quickly got to work to assess data and how they met international criteria. The BirdLife Secretariat also worked hard with the EAAFP to mobilise the international conservation community for support. In total, 78 signatories were brought together, including representatives of no fewer than 33 BirdLife Partners.

The World Heritage inscription of the four South Korean sites as ‘Getbol, Korean tidal flats’ in July 2021 is a critical milestone in the work to protect these globally important wetlands. Beyond this, Getbol is also a matter of pride for South Korea, being its second natural property inscribed beside well-known Jeju Island. South Korea’s President Moon Jae-In noted that this proud moment did not happen overnight and was a result of the “wisdom and sacrifice” of many people and “desperate protection” – a testament to the work of the conservation community.

Work goes on

However, the inscription of Getbol is only the beginning of a wider, encouraging effort by the three countries to secure the Yellow Sea’s wetlands. China is building momentum on its work to nominate more than 14 new wetland sites on its coast for World Heritage status. “The Korean Getbol inscription complements the Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Coast of the Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf of China (Phase I) World Heritage Site listed in 2019,” said Doug Watkins, Chief Executive of EAAFP. “It will strengthen international collaboration, particularly in the vision of transboundary joint efforts with China and DPR Korea, to conserve the wetlands of the Yellow Sea region, an irreplaceable migration hub for migratory waterbirds shared by the 22 countries in the Flyway.”

While celebrating this success, South Korea is now moving to the second phase of its nomination of World Heritage sites, which in time will expand the protected wetland estate in the country, including the vast mudflats around Ganghwa.

Efforts for wetland and biodiversity conservation are also gathering momentum in North Korea, which joined the Ramsar Convention just two years ago, and is now stepping up efforts to document its migratory waterbirds and strengthen protection of its wetlands. A series of World Heritage Sites of critical wetlands surrounding the entire Yellow Sea appears to be an increasing possibility, mirroring similar efforts in Europe’s Wadden Sea.

Given the global importance of the wetlands in the Yellow Sea, it is critical now that this momentum for strengthening protection of these valuable intertidal flats is not lost. Above all, there is a rare window of opportunity for the three countries to work together to secure the future of a shared heritage of wetlands, migratory birds and the many ecosystem services that come alongside these fantastic habitats.

“It will strengthen international collaboration… to conserve the wetlands of the Yellow Sea region, an irreplaceable migration hub for migratory waterbirds shared by the 22 countries in the Flyway.”

Doug Watkins, Chief Executive, East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership

Which factors make some locations higher priority than others?

The benefits and costs of restoration vary substantially across the world. The amount of carbon that would be captured by restoring a site differs depending on habitat and location, and the biodiversity value of locations also varies. Added to this, habitat restoration is much cheaper in some locations than others.

How did you explore these trade-offs?

We collaborated with scientists at the International Institute for Sustainability in Brazil – along with other institutions – to use an approach called ‘linear programming’. Through this method, we calculated the optimal distribution of restored sites under three criteria (minimising extinctions, mitigating climate change and minimising costs) under 1,200 different scenarios.

What were the key findings?

Priority areas for restoration varied wildly depending on which of the criteria we focused on. Overall, we found that restoring 15% of converted lands in priority areas could avoid 60% of expected extinctions while capturing 299 gigatonnes of CO2 – 30% of the total CO2 increase in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Importantly, we found that it is much more cost-effective to optimise across multiple criteria simultaneously. This highlights the importance of spatial planning and pursuing climate and biodiversity goals simultaneously rather than separately.

Which kinds of habitat are important for restoration?

All biomes have an important role, but priority areas tended to be concentrated in wetlands and tropical and subtropical forests. These sites typically had high carbon stocks, high species diversity and considerable loss of natural habitat.

What were the limitations of the study?

We focused exclusively on areas that had been converted to other uses, since the costs and benefits of restoring degraded ecosystems are less well known. We also did not consider the way climate change is affecting the distributions of species, biomass and agricultural production. Finally, at local and national scales it is critical to consider socio-economic issues such as social equity and land tenure.

How can we turn information into action?

Governments have made bold commitments to restore ecosystems, including in relation to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), Bonn Challenge, New York Declaration on Forests and the Paris Climate Accord. Our methods and results can help nations to develop efficient spatial plans that ensure such restoration delivers maximum benefit for biodiversity and climate change, while minimising costs.

Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration is published in Nature.

“Priority areas tended to be concentrated in wetlands and tropical and subtropical forests. These sites typically had high carbon stocks, high species diversity and considerable loss of natural habitat.”

Stuart Butchart, BirdLife Chief Scientist and co-author of the paper

Tell us how it all began…

The nineties not only brought the ‘wind of change’ and democracy to Poland, but also the creation of OTOP. The idea came up in 1990, just after a workshop organised in the UK by the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK). A small group of enthusiasts returned to our country with a vision for a new, strong organisation working for bird protection and, thanks to their commitment, a year later OTOP was formed. The beginning was challenging, with just three employees working from a rented room in Gdańsk. But with time, our organisation has developed into one of the most prominent NGOs in Poland.

What have been your biggest successes?

One of our priorities from the very beginning was an Important Bird & Biodiversity Area (IBA) Programme. OTOP prepared three inventories of IBAs in Poland – in 1993, 2004 and 2010 – and it paid off: most of the 175 IBAs are now protected as EU Natura 2000 sites.

The apple of OTOP’s eye is its reserves – Beka, Karsiborska Kępa and sites in the Biebrza Valley. Their management, including grazing with horses, help us to create habitats for birds. Sometimes we had to fight for the protection of the most valuable places in Poland, such as Rospuda Valley and Bialowieza Forest. Our successful campaign to save Rospuda has become a shining example of how NGOs can effectively protect nature, and our staff member, Gosia Górska, received the Goldman Prize in 2010 for her work on this.

Which bird species have you focused on?

Our priority species has always been Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola (Vulnerable) – one of the rarest and most threatened passerines in Europe. Conservation projects at major Aquatic Warbler sites in Biebrza and the Lublin Region have helped the population to increase and subsequently expand to new areas. The European Commission granted two LIFE projects for the conservation of Aquatic Warblers, which were awarded the Best LIFE Projects of 2013 and 2015.

It’s not only about Aquatic Warbler, though. OTOP has worked with other species that are threatened in Poland, such as European Roller Coracias garrulus, Mew Gull Larus Canus and Dunlin Calidris alpina. We not only protect, but also monitor. OTOP is now the key contractor of the Programme of Bird Monitoring in Poland, which helps to track trends for 170 breeding bird species. At the same time, we are managing the country’s biggest citizen science database, ornitho.pl, which now holds 5.5 million bird records!

So public engagement is also a large part of your work?

Without people, OTOP would not achieve a single goal. The engagement of our network of members and volunteers allows us to spread our efforts across the whole country.

Education and awareness-raising are an important part of each of our projects – however, two of our initiatives need special attention. Spring Alive, co-ordinated internationally by OTOP since its inception in 2006, is an educational project aiming to help children, their families and teachers to understand the need for international conservation of migratory species and to take action to conserve birds and nature. Currently it operates in 30 countries across Europe, Asia and Africa, and thanks to BirdLife Partners, it managed to engage over 117,000 children last year.

OTOP Junior is an umbrella concept for a wide range of activities aimed at pupils and their teachers, for which we’ve developed a diverse range of educational offerings. More than 1,700 educators work with these materials.

Any words for the BirdLife Partnership?

OTOP has always worked according to the BirdLife mission, focusing on sites, species and communities. We cannot forget about the substantial and timely support from abroad, predominantly through the BirdLife Partnership. DOF (BirdLife in Denmark) and RSPB helped OTOP during the very first years of operation to transform from a ‘hatchling’ to maturity. RSPB and the BirdLife Secretariat have continued to support us in many different ways since.

What’s next?

Obviously during the last 30 years we have had some tough moments, including lack of financial stability, political reluctance and internal, management-related problems. But we have managed to get through all of this. Now we can honestly say that OTOP is seen in Poland as a key environmental NGO, with our expertise and professional team acting as benchmarks for the whole country. 2021 is a significant year, bringing in a new management team and a five-year strategy. So rest assured that this is not our last word: we still want to grow and develop.

“OTOP is a strong and truly effective national organisation. Poland’s national poet once said: ‘Nature, you are like the nation’s health; only those who have lost you can learn how much you’re prized.’ Today, that nature is treasured by OTOP so that future generations will see and cherish it.”

Zbig Karpowicz, former senior partner development officer for the RSPB, was at the genesis of this adventure 30 years ago

It’s the legs that first catch the eye. They’re yellower than the name Spotted Greenshank Tringa guttifer might imply and an ideal length for loping through invertebrate-rich shallows in the upper Gulf of Thailand, on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Then its distinctively unusual upturned bill comes into view. BirdLife is now seeking to improve the future of this intriguing wader, through a Preventing Extinctions project supported by optics manufacturer Zeiss.

Spotted Greenshank is a worthy focus as it numbers “among the world’s most threatened shorebirds,” says Ding Li Yong, BirdLife’s Flyways Co-ordinator for Asia. Classified as Endangered, perhaps fewer than 1,500 remain. Worse, its population decline is ongoing, driven principally by habitat loss and degradation at unprotected sites. Such threats are especially worrisome given that Spotted Greenshank’s tightly confined distribution offers little safety net: it breeds solely in a small area neighbouring Russia’s remote coast where, fascinatingly, it builds its own nests (a unique behaviour among shorebirds) in larch trees.

After using a small number of staging posts on their migration southwards, all the world’s Spotted Greenshanks winter exclusively in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia. But even here the room for conservation manoeuvre is limited: “In winter, most of the known population appears largely concentrated in Thailand and Malaysia,” Yong explains. Specifically, “the varied wetlands of the inner Gulf of Thailand form the world’s most important wintering area,” says Thattaya Bidayabha of Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST – BirdLife Partner). These may hold one-third of all Spotted Greenshanks, with two vital sites – Pak Thale Nature Reserve salt pans and Laem Phak Bia mudflats – hosting upwards of 100 individuals.

This pair of locations provides the fulcrum of a new BCST-led project, supported by BirdLife Asia. Building on five years of shorebird conservation efforts, including establishing a private nature reserve, BCST’s Khwankhao Sinhaseni explains that the organisation envisions “significantly strengthening local interest and engagement in Spotted Greenshank conservation in particular, plus shorebird conservation more widely.” This matters, Bidayabha adds, because “much of its habitat here remains unprotected.”

A key, if challenging, aim involves forming new local conservation groups at one or more coastal wetlands. “They can be our guards,” Sinhaseni says, “to protect greenshanks and address threats they face,” such as illegal hunting using mist-nets. BCST will complement this by raising community awareness of the importance of ‘working wetlands’, such as salt pans, that benefit people and shorebirds alike. Plans include educational camps for children, a national shorebird photography competition and developing community-based enterprises such as selling salt-based spa products.

“We want local communities to be more aware of migratory shorebirds that connect us to other parts of Asia and need better protection,” Sinhaseni says. Overall, she concludes, BCST aspires to “build long-term collaborations, even extending beyond the project’s lifetime.”

BCST also aims to address knowledge gaps in greenshank distribution and ecology that impede its conservation in Southeast Asia. Even despite BCST’s recent extensive surveys, Bidayabha explains, “we know that wintering sites remain to be discovered along the Gulf of Thailand,” so a key objective involves tracking them all down.

Doing so will inform “a model for habitat management that helps greenshanks and other globally threatened waterbirds,” Sinhaseni explains. Beneficiaries will include the handful of Spoon-billed Sandpipers Calidris pygmaea (Critically Endangered) that winter here, plus large congregations of Great Knot Calidris tenuirostris (Endangered) and Painted Stork Mycteria leucocephala (Near Threatened), and smaller numbers of Far Eastern Curlew Numenius madagascariensis (Endangered), Chinese Egret Egretta eulophotes (Vulnerable) and Asian Dowitcher Limnodromus semipalmatus (Near Threatened).

“We want local communities to be more aware of migratory shorebirds that connect us to other parts of Asia and need better protection.”

Khwankhao Sinhaseni, Conservation Manager, Bird Conservation Society of Thailand

Meanwhile, by “strengthening the conservation of Southeast Asia’s coastal wetlands,” Yong says, project activities will also help deliver monitoring, conservation, capacity-building and outreach priorities in BirdLife’s East Asian-Australasian Flyway Conservation Strategy.

Such a raft of anticipated benefits understandably caught the attention of Zeiss, which has previously supported BirdLife work on Northern Bald Ibis Geronticus eremita (Endangered) in Morocco. “We are delighted to become a BirdLife Species Champion for Spotted Greenshank,” says Petra Kregelius-Schmidt, Zeiss. “Spotted Greenshank is another great example of a threatened migratory bird that needs urgent help, so we are pleased to support BirdLife’s vital research and conservation action to help protect it on its wintering grounds.”

On the muddy fringes of the Gulf of Thailand then, a classic BirdLife project is unfurling: one that focuses on a globally threatened bird, is led by a BirdLife Partner, supported by a committed Species Champion, underpinned by exciting field research, and is fully engaged with local communities as part of site-based conservation. The Spotted Greenshank’s fortunes, like its beak, are on the upturn.

James Lowen

Imagine driving a car on a long-distance road trip. Your fuel tank starts full, but then runs low. No worries: you’ll refill at the next available gas station. Chugging towards those much-needed pumps, however, you find the station is closed. You must eke out the remaining fuel for another few hours. And if the tank runs dry, your journey is over.

Welcome to the life of a Far Eastern Curlew (Endangered), the world’s largest shorebird. The survival of this leggy, dramatically long-billed migratory marvel depends on an unbroken chain of wetland ‘service stations’ lining the coasts of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway – yet it increasingly encounters concrete wastelands where food-rich mudflats used to be. Its population has crashed by 81% in three decades.

To the untrained human eye – or that of an entrepreneurial developer – habitats such as tidal mudflats and salt marshes may seem featureless, devoid of life and ripe for reclamation. To millions of waterbirds worldwide, however, they are vital feeding stations – filled with energy-packed molluscs and worms, plus essential fatty acids – that power perilous migrations.

“Coastal wetlands are essential for birds to rest and refuel before continuing their gruelling, long-distance marathon,” explains Barend van Gemerden (BirdLife’s Global Flyways Programme Co-ordinator).

Home to millions

This is true along each of the eight major migratory bird flyways identified worldwide, which for millennia have connected boreal breeding grounds with southern hemisphere wintering quarters. The numbers of birds involved emphasise their importance. The East Asian-Australasian Flyway serves an astounding 50 million migratory waterbirds, including Far Eastern Curlew and Great Knot (Endangered), at 900 internationally important wetlands across 22 countries.

In the Americas, up to 1.3 million migratory shorebirds gather in Suriname and the Bay of Panama, as do 1.1 million in Alaska’s Copper River Delta. Despite a 68% decline from 1982–2005, perhaps two million Semipalmated Sandpipers (Near Threatened) – three-quarters of the world total – assemble in Canada’s Bay of Fundy, drawn by seasonally high densities of crustaceans that fuel a 3,000-km non-stop flight to South America.

The world’s largest tidal mudflats, Europe’s Wadden Sea, nourish 12 million migratory waterbirds, including almost all the world’s ‘dark-bellied’ Brent Geese. On Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, Sivash provides the key stopover point for Broad-billed Sandpiper: almost one-third of its western population may pause there. Research into the body fat levels of this stripy-headed wader suggests that southbound autumn migrants take migration to the wire, building up just enough fat to travel 1,300 km non-stop from Poland’s Baltic coast to Sivash. For its strategy to succeed, Broad-billed Sandpipers rely on Sivash’s brackish lagoons and mudflats remaining intact. Should they – or other wetland stopovers – be destroyed or become degraded, the waders risk death.

“Coastal wetlands are essential for birds to rest and refuel before continuing their gruelling, long-distance marathon.”

Barend van Gemerden, Global Flyways Programme Co-ordinator, BirdLife

Nowhere to go

The tragic case of Great Knot exemplifies what happens when things go wrong. In the 2000s, the Republic of Korea reclaimed 400 km² of Yellow Sea mudflats at Saemangeum by building the world’s longest seawall. Ninety thousand exhausted migrants arrived where the estuary should have been – but found neither habitat nor food. Unable to refuel, they died in transit. Removing this food-rich stopover for migrating Great Knot reduced the species’ global population by 20–30%. In 2010, Great Knot was catapulted from Least Concern to Vulnerable, then uplisted to Endangered in 2015.

One eighth of the world population of the closely-related Red Knot (Near Threatened) uses the same flyway, so these birds run a similar gauntlet. But it is the subspecies rufa, journeying along the eastern seaboard of the Americas from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, that has most dramatically suffered unintended consequences of human enterprise. Its population has slumped by 75% in 15 years because of problems at a single site, Delaware Bay (USA). Unlike Saemangeum, its habitat remains intact – but there is no longer enough food. Red Knots have long timed their spring arrival to feast on Horseshoe Crab eggs. But the crabs have been so overharvested that the food source has expired. With insufficient energy to fly the final 3,000 km to Canadian breeding grounds, it was game over.

“Coastal wetlands,” van Gemerden emphasises, “are a lifeline for hundreds of species that migrate through them every year.” But as the two species of knot demonstrate, this lifeline is fraying. The tension between avian need and human greed renders coastal wetlands, according to van Gemerden, “one of the world’s most threatened habitats, devastated by pollution, disturbance, drainage and development projects – and disappearing or being degraded worldwide.” Things will worsen with climate change: modelling suggests that a 2°C rise would impact four out of five US sample sites, destroying 20–70% of their intertidal habitat.

Vanishing habitat

Globally, one sixth of mudflats (more than 20,000 km2 ) disappeared from 1984 to 2016. In the Yellow Sea, up to 65% of intertidal habitats has been lost in 50 years, vast muddy expanses reclaimed for agriculture, aquaculture or infrastructure. The difficulties many migratory birds face in completing annual migrations, van Gemerden says, are “leading to population collapses, pushing a suite of species towards extinction”. Moreover, this tragedy affects not just birds, but people too, given the importance of coastal wetlands in sequestering carbon and reducing flood risk through buffering wave energy.

Accordingly, coastal wetlands need urgent, intensive attention. “BirdLife is working with local communities across the world to protect and restore unique habitats,” van Gemerden explains. “The voices of local users help show how valuable healthy coastal wetlands are.”

Examples from the BirdLife Partnership are wide-ranging. The Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BirdLife Partner), with support from BirdLife Species Champion Zeiss, is working with local conservation groups to protect working wetlands important for shorebirds such as Spotted Greenshank (Endangered). Audubon (BirdLife in the USA) has restored tidal marshland at San Pablo Bay, California, helping migratory shorebirds such as Willet as well as Black Rail (Endangered). BirdLife Cyprus has removed invasive reeds and created new pools to restore Akrotiri Marsh, a key breeding site for the migratory Ferruginous Duck (Near Threatened). Having worked on 70-plus coastal habitat creation projects in the UK, RSPB (BirdLife Partner) has consolidated its experience into a ‘sustainable shores’ action plan now being brought to a wider audience.

Tropical mangrove forests often shelter open coastal wetland habitats and guard communities against rising sea levels, so receive ample BirdLife attention. In Nigeria, BirdLife is funding a local women’s charity to promote mangrove agroforestry, thereby sustaining livelihoods and stabilising the coast. In Mexico, Pronatura (BirdLife Partner) has worked with villagers for 15 years to restore mangroves. Similar BirdLife initiatives have protected mangroves, and thereby helped both birds and people, in the Caribbean, Panama, Palau and Samoa.

Protecting wetlands globally

Site-based conservation is key, clearly, but BirdLife goes further. “We are also working with governments and businesses to ensure development projects are located out of harm’s way,” van Gemerden says. Again, examples are numerous. In Montenegro, CZIP (BirdLife Partner) successfully blocked construction at Ulcini Salina, persuading the government to protect nationally important saltpans instead. In Turkey, Doğa (BirdLife Partner) launched a successful legal challenge against construction of a ‘mega-bridge’ at Izmir Bay, where a tenth of the world population of Greater Flamingo comes to breed. SPEA (BirdLife Partner) is fighting the Portuguese government’s decision to construct an airport on the Tagus Estuary, winter home to 70,000 Black-tailed Godwits (Near Threatened).

In the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, BirdLife Partner Nature Society (Singapore) secured formal Government protection of mudflats and mangroves at Kranji-Mandai, thereby helping migratory Chinese Egrets (Vulnerable). In 2020, years of effort by BANCA (BirdLife in Myanmar) successfully quadrupled the protected area of mudflats in the Gulf of Mottama to 1,610 km². Alongside restoring habitat at Geum Estuary, the Republic of Korea’s most important wetland following the destruction of Saemangeum and a migratory haven for 5,000 Far Eastern Curlew, the BirdLife Partnership helped South Korean authorities secure the tidal flats’ designation as a World Heritage Site earlier this year. “BirdLife has been extremely influential in guiding governments to take action,” van Gemerden underlines.

This is all great news, but the chain of sites that forms a flyway is only ever as strong as its weakest link. “The loss of a wetland in one country directly affects the number of birds in other nations,” van Gemerden explains. Sadly, the spectre of development looms over wetlands worldwide. Two particularly worrying current examples come from opposite ends of the planet. Canada’s Fraser River Delta, the vital final northbound stopover for most of the world’s Western Sandpipers, is threatened by a proposed massive expansion of a freight terminal. In Australia, meanwhile, 3,000 wintering Far Eastern Curlews are imperilled by plans for a marina and apartment complex at Moreton Bay.

In both developments, BirdLife Partners are on the case. “Through pooling the experience, capacity and influence of our global Partnership,” van Gemerden says, “we are uniting countries along all the world’s major migration routes, ensuring birds have a linked chain of safe havens throughout their journeys.” The world’s coastal wetlands and their migratory waders – whether leggy and long-billed or otherwise equipped – need BirdLife’s help. And that means yours too.

Every year, over 200 species of waterbird take off from their breeding grounds across the tundra, marshes and frozen forests of northern Asia, bound to spend the winter in the balmy climates of Australia and New Zealand. Along the way, the diverse flocks converge upon the coastal wetlands of Southeast Asia to refuel on the shoreline’s bountiful worms and molluscs. These vital habitats form the heart of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway – one of the world’s major bird migration flight paths. Protecting these sites is therefore a conservation priority – but what has been achieved so far?

A new paper published in the journal Oryx, written by BirdLife and several of our national Partners, sheds light on the scale of the challenge – not least, the large gaps in basic ecological knowledge of shorebirds in the region, including where the most important sites are found. These knowledge gaps have impeded efforts to protect the most important wetlands for threatened species.

Even when important sites have been identified, action has not necessarily been taken. For instance, while 180 Important Bird & Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) across Southeast Asia contain coastal wetlands, only a small number are actually legally protected. Meanwhile, several potentially important sites for migratory waterbirds remain to be studied, and ongoing research such as satellite tracking has uncovered areas of wetland that hold threatened species, but which are entirely undocumented.