News

Talk 1: Tracking the fine-scale movement of Flamingos in the Western-Arid Plains of India.

Speaker: Gaurav Sirola (Wildlife Institute of India)

Across the distribution range of Greater and Lesser Flamingo, Gujarat, India is a stronghold for resident – breeding flamingos. The arid of Gujarat (Great Rann of Kachchh and Little Rann of Kachchh) are essential breeding grounds for lesser and greater flamingos. These breeding areas are designated as Wildlife Sanctuaries (Kachchh Desert Wildlife Sanctuary and   Indian Wild Ass Sanctuary) and hence protected by law. Flamingos use these breeding grounds for a short duration, while the rest of their time is spent in non-protected areas. The non-protected areas are constantly changing to meet the requirements of the exploding human population; wildlife habitats are under immense pressure, both of which pose a direct threat to the associated flora and fauna. With time, changes in land-use patterns are likely to occur. The water bodies, which are the habitats of flamingos, are bound to be affected by the change in land use; hence it is quite essential to identify critical flamingo habitats outside protected area networks.

This study has help determine the breeding grounds of the Flamingo arriving in Kachchh. The fine-scale movement data of flamingos also provide detailed insights on the use of coastal water bodies during the non-breeding period and has help enhance the knowledge of the behavior and ecology of the species. This tracking effort will further help promote the positive conservation activities being undertaken by the Forest Department and also expected to raise awareness of the region.

Talk 2: Movement ecology of Common cranes (Grus grus) in western India: insights from multi-year tracking

Speaker: Harindra Baraiya (Wildlife Institute of India)

The arid plains of Gujarat and Rajasthan in western India support large populations of the Common Crane that arrive from different parts of their breeding range. Few of the wintering sites witness huge congregations of the cranes; these are often species-specific flocks numbering in thousands. In a few places, local people actively protect the cranes and provide grains throughout their wintering period as a cultural practice. While the previous studies shed light on migratory routes of Common Cranes from western India, it is important to put full-fledged efforts to track a more number of individuals for multiple migratory journeys to ascertain migration behavior, crucial high-use areas, drivers of migratory route selection, and wintering and breeding movements.

During 2020, we initiated a Common Crane tracking project in Gujarat, western India, during which we tagged five cranes with GPS-GSM transmitters. The cranes were captured from Nal Sarovar and Thol Ramsar sites in Gujarat. The multi-year tracking data of these five tagged cranes suggested that the wintering population of Gujarat’s Common cranes comes from the breeding grounds of Russia and Kazakhstan through the deserts of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan along the Central Asian Flyway. The migration behavior of the cranes was found to differ seasonally in terms of stopover duration and migration duration. The tracking data analysis identified crucial stopover sites and a migratory bottleneck. The wintering movement data suggested that the variation in home range area between tagged Common Cranes is quite large and is likely attributed to the landscape they are using. The tracking data also highlights habitat connectivity in western India.

The recording is also available on Bilibili: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ep421S77k/

Speaker: Ramesh Kumar Selvaraj is a scientist with Wetlands and Flyways Programme of Bombay Natural History Society. He works on the interactions of birds with renewable energy infrastructures and also on bird migration studies. He has also been assisting the Indian Government in taking forward the Central Asian Flyway Initiative.

Abstract: India has been actively involved in fostering flyway cooperation and has also organized intergovernmental meetings that have been critically important in developing and taking forward agreements and plans. As part of this India has launched a comprehensive National Action Plan for Migratory Bird Conservation (NAP) in 2018, with a aim to halt and arrest the decline of migratory birds in India. This National Action Plan has prioritized 20 species as important for the Central Asian flyway and recommends preparation of National Single species action plan for these species. In this regard, Bombay Natural History Society has developed a conservation action plan that seeks to protect groups of wader species that occur across similar habitats in the Indian wintering grounds. There are ten such species of migratory waders viz. Curlew Sandpiper, Black-tailed Godwit, Lesser Sand Plover, Little Stint, Crab Plover, Great Knot, Bar-tailed Godwit, Long-toed Stint, Eurasian Curlew and Red Knot that are highly dependent on both coastal and inland wetlands during their nonbreeding period of their annual life cycle. Population of most of the above-mentioned wader species has declined or changed considerably in recent decades, and their survival is largely linked to the quality and extent of wetland habitats and the wider landscapes within which they are found. The conservation actions will be achieved through improving the knowledge of the species, and their distribution in India, setting conservation goals for managing the healthy populations, coordinating conservation efforts and management of the key habitats where they are occurring, and tackling the key threats for both the species and their habitats.

The recording is also available on Bilibili: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1PJ4m187vP/

Hebo Peng is a PhD in the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has conducted 12 years of shorebird research along the Chinese coast, including 9 years of studies covering the entire Chinese coast with shorebird and macrobenthic sampling. In addition, he is now involved in some research on the effects of environmental pollution on shorebirds.

Understanding the habitat quality and the threats encountered by birds during migration, and how they adapt to local environments, are among the most critical knowledge issues for bird conservation. Especially for shorebirds in East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF), a flyway in which in-depth studies had a late start. We explored the use of tracking techniques to understand habitat selection and site utilization by shorebirds and to understand the patterns thus described, we surveyed shorebird food, the macrobenthos, at stopover and staging sites along the entire coast of China. By analysing the responses of shorebirds to habitat loss and degradation and human activity, we explored how birds adapt to the rapid and dramatic changes in habitats. We found that aquaculture practices had altered the biodiversity patterns and stability of mollusc communities throughout coastal China. The distribution of shorebirds was highly correlated to the distribution of aquaculture molluscs. Because migratory shorebirds rely on aquaculture molluscs for food, and the instability of food resources resulted in frequent food crises for the birds, which respond in terms of migration timing, energy reserve, and movements. Better understanding of the habitat quality of intertidal mudflats and rational management of aquaculture activities along China’s coasts, will provide sufficient help for the conservation of the shorebirds in EAAF.

Video on Bilibili: CLICK HERE

1. Fight or Flight: Investigating the response of shorebird flocks to uncrewed aerial vehicles

By Joshua Wilson who is a PhD candidate in the School of Environment at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has been investigating the use of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV) to survey shorebirds as they forage across vast intertidal habitats. As a first step, he has been studying the response of mixed-species shorebird flocks to an approaching UAV.

2. Variation and Status of ducks (Anatidae) species  during migration period: Case Study Chukh Lake

By Altangerel Tsogtmagnai who is a researcher in the Mongolian Bird Conservation Center and also serves as the coordinator of the Chukh Bird Research Station. His work and that of his team primarily involves researching the ecology, biology, and migration of endangered species in eastern Mongolia. Furthermore, the CBRS primarily concentrates on the study of shorebirds and waterbirds.

Or watch the recording on Bilibili: Click HERE

Julia Loshchagina is a scientific researcher at the Laboratory of Biogeography at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. She has been working with Arctic birds since 2013. Currently, she is part of a team studying bird populations on Kolguev Island in the European Russian Arctic. Since 2006, the research team has been monitoring the avifauna of Kolguev and conducted detailed studies on geese, Long-tailed ducks and waders.

Kolguev Island in the south-eastern Barents Sea is one of the main nesting sites for geese in the European Russian Arctic. About 30% of the populations of three goose species breeding in the Russian Arctic and wintering in Europe nest here. The exceptionally high abundance of geese is the result of a relatively stable predation pressure due to the complete absence of rodents.

Russian Barnacle goose population has increased dramatically over the past 35 years. On Kolguev, the number of breeding Barnacle geese has also increased from single nests in the 1980s to the most numerous goose species of the island. Starting nesting on sandbars of southern Kolguev, Barnacle geese have now expanded throughout the island, occupying a wide variety of nesting habitats not previously used by this species. As a result, Barnacle geese may compete with White-fronted geese, which used to be the most numerous goose species on the island, since they can use the same habitats for nesting, rearing goslings and moulting.

Our study of breeding density and nesting success of the species in different parts of the island showed that an increase in the number of Barnacle geese affects White-fronted geese. Spatial analysis of the nest locations of the two species nesting on the same study plots showed that White-fronted geese preferred to nest more distant from Barnacle goose nests than randomly. This corroborates the hypothesis that the dispersal of Barnacle goose throughout the island may lead to a redistribution of White-fronted goose nests.

The high breeding density of many bird species on Kolguev Island highlights a high international conservation value of the island. Long-term monitoring of Kolguev ecosystems has revealed a transformation of the island ecosystem, reflecting the impact of climate change on bird populations in lemming-free ecosystem, which is a rarity in the Arctic.

Yanjie Xu is HelLO postdoc researcher of Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki. She studies macrospatial ecological dynamics. Under the background of global change, her current research topics include pan-European avian conservation prioritization; connectivity of global bird migration networks; disease dynamics in European birds and bats; waterbird conservation in Indian coasts; bird conservation in Finland – wetland restoration, window collision, and tick infestation; etc.

Migratory birds rely on a network of interconnected sites to complete their annual cycle. Every year, they move through these migration networks, site by site, for breeding, moulting, foraging, refueling and resting during long-distance movements, exchanging social information, etc. Meanwhile, these networks function propagule dispersal, pathogen exchange, nutrient and contaminant cycling. Conserving the connectivity of migration networks is essential for sustainability of bird populations and ecosystem services provided by their movements.Prioritizing conservation efforts for sites that have a crucial contribution to connectivity of entire migration network is an effective and efficient approach, which returns great conservation gains from protecting a small proportion of sites. However, 35% of such important sites along global bird migration routes have no coverage of protected area at all, putting a majority (~90%) of migratory bird species at risk. Also, such connectivity aspect has not yet been included as a quantitative criterion for designating protected areas in international frameworks of bird conservation. For migratory species, it is important to make conservation decisions from a network perspective, which requires intergovernmental partnerships and collaborative actions.

The talk was given by Dr. Mu, Tong (Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University)

Migratory species are declining worldwide due to a suite of anthropogenic threats; these declines, in turn, have led to the deterioration of crucial ecosystem functions at a global scale. Unlike resident species, for which threats are usually local in nature and can therefore be addressed by local conservation measures, many migratory species travel across vast areas and may face multiple threats at different sites or life history stages. As a result, identifying the sites, stages, and threats that have the most significant impact on the population growth or size of migratory species is more challenging yet critical to effectively conserving populations of migrants. The loss or degradation of stopover sites, indispensable links during the annual movement cycles of migratory species, has been repeatedly identified as a major cause of the declines of various species. However, the effect of habitat changes on migrant populations is usually less evident compared to those of other threats, and quantifying such effects can be particularly challenging.

To address such need and challenges, we will first present a theoretical framework that may facilitate both research and on-ground conservation focusing on migratory birds at stopover sites, through (a) quantifying the present habitat use intensity as an index for relative importance of each stopover site in supporting migrant populations and (b) evaluating the carrying capacity of stopover sites to identify the potential population bottleneck that may have contributed or will lead to the decline of migratory birds. The speaker will then demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework using a field study focusing on shorebirds migrating along the EAAF.

Also on Bilibili: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Fs4y1u7Mo/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=c53d6edc8ddb6324ee27fd5fa135ece7

P.S. Based on the author’s request, we are not posting the second talk on the internet.

Dr. Suresh Kumar (Department of Endangered Species Management at the Wildlife Institute of India)

The Central Asian Flyway comprising 30 countries is one of the nine flyways in the world and supports significant populations of a number of migratory water birds and land birds including several globally threatened and near-threatened species. Populations of these species breed in the northern latitudes of Asia from close to the Arctic coast, and almost 90% of these migrate south to the Indian Subcontinent which serves as their non-breeding destination. Many waterbird populations in the CAF region are reported to be declining as a result of habitat loss and degradation due to changing land use practices, unsustainable water management, pollution, unsustainable hunting and poaching, poisoning, and lack of law enforcement and conservation capacity. Information on how land use changes are impacting Central Asian Flyway (CAF) birds is still poorly known. One another major challenge faced with the management of migratory birds and their habitats is the spread of diseases for example avian influenza. Clearly, the abovementioned are all areas of work that require immediate attention and research, and to manage and mitigate the threats a flyway scale approach is clearly the need of the hour. This calls for working together across national borders through coordinated actions.

India has been actively involved in fostering CAF flyway cooperation and organized intergovernmental meetings in the past that have been critically important in developing and taking forward agreements and plans. The Indian Government through its Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change also developed and launched ‘India’s National Action Plan for Conservation of Migratory Birds and their Habitats along Central Asian Flyway (2018–2023)’. Since CMS CoP13, efforts for the development of an institutional mechanism to be established for the CAF have been underway so as to take forward the CAF initiative.

Predicting Seasonal Bird Migration with Birdcast

Dr. Kyle Horton

Assistant Professor Colorado State University Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology

Billions of animals cross the globe each year during seasonal migrations, but efforts to monitor them are hampered by the unpredictability of their movements. We developed a bird migration forecast system at a continental scale by leveraging 23 years of spring observations to identify associations between atmospheric conditions and bird migration intensity. Our models explained up to 81% of variation in migration intensity across the United States at altitudes of 0 to 3000 meters, and performance remained high in forecasting events 1 to 7 days in advance (62 to 76% of variation was explained). Avian migratory movements across the United States likely exceed 500 million individuals per night during peak passage. Bird migration forecasts will reduce collisions with buildings, airplanes, and wind turbines; inform a variety of monitoring efforts; and engage the public.