birding-aus

Fw: Population decline in Spoon-billed Sandpiper

To:
Subject: Fw: Population decline in Spoon-billed Sandpiper
From: Hugo Phillipps <>
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 07:53:38 +1000
Hi everybody -

For your information - the message below was posted to Waders-L by Eugeny
Syroechkovski and Pavel Tomkovich.

Regards,
Hugo
------------------------------------ 

Is the Spoon-billed Sandpiper on the fast road to extinction?

Unique to the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper,
Eurynorhynchus pygmeus, is a globally threatened (vulnerable) wader species.
The size of its population is unknown, and the largest flock ever recorded is
257 birds in the Ganges delta, Bangladesh (Howes & Parish 1989).  The only
population estimate based on real data was undertaken in 1970s and resulted
in 2,000-2,800 breeding pairs, which seems to be an overestimate even for
that time.  No information is widely known about the species' population
trend.

In June-early August 2000, a survey of coastal areas in southern Chukotka
Autonomous Area, NE Siberia, was undertaken by the International Arctic
Expedition of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of
Sciences.  The most unexpected finding of the survey was  the almost total
absence of Spoon-billed Sandpipers in four locations formerly known as
breeding sites for this species.  It means that the population number has
declined roughly by an order of magnitude during the last one or two decades.
The summer of  2000 was generally favourable for breeding of various birds
in the surveyed area, and the Spoon-billed Sandpiper is known to be a site-
faithful species.  This means that seasonal conditions in the summer of  2000
were not responsible for the negligible number of Spoon-billed Sandpipers
recorded breeding.  Such results throw new light on previous indications of a
possible species decline which came from two other more northerly breeding
locations.

There are no obvious reasons for the decline within the species' breeding
range. Therefore causes should be looked for on migration and/or wintering
grounds, where migratory waders are known to meet many threats (e.g. see
First Draft for the "Asia-Pacific Migratory Waterbird Strategy: 2001 + 2005"
at http://ngo.asiapac.net/wetlands).  A bottleneck for the Spoon-billed
Sandpiper population is not known.  Thus, there is a big chance of losing
one more wader species before we find a clue for the situation, if the current
level of knowledge and conservation on the species is not urgently changed/
improved. Anyway, there are no doubts that the current status of the Spoon-
billed Sandpiper is endangered (possibly even critically endangered), not
simply vulnerable anymore.

Eugeny E. Syroechkovski, Jr.
Leader of the International Arctic Expedition
Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences
Leninski Prospect, 33
Moscow, 117071, Russia
E-mail: 

and

Pavel S. Tomkovich
Zoological Museum
Moscow State University
B.Nikitskaya Street, 6
Moscow, 103009, Russia
E-mail: 
------------------------------------------------

Hugo Phillipps
Communications Coordinator
Birds Australia
415 Riversdale Road
HAWTHORN EAST 3123, Australia
Tel: (03) 9882 2622, fax: (03) 9882 2677
Email: <>
Web site: <http://www.birdsaustralia.com.au>


Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to 

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
  • Fw: Population decline in Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Hugo Phillipps <=
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU