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A survey of the Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper Eurynorhynchus pygmeus in Bangladesh and key future research and conservation recommendations
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Bird, Jeremy P. Lees, Alexander C. Chowdhury, Sayam U. Martin, Robert W. Haque, Enam Ul |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | As the scale of the decline in the Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper has become apparent, the urgency to understand the size and distribution of the remaining population in order to identify key threats and implement targeted conservation actions has intensified. Bangladesh has been recognised as an important non-breeding range state since the largest single flock of 202 individuals ever recorded was found at Moulevir Char in 1989. Annual winter totals have been considerably lower in recent years as survey attention has focused on Myanmar. We conducted surveys in coastal Bangladesh between 6 March and 8 April 2010 to determine the continuing importance of Bangladesh for wintering Spoon-billed Sandpiper, gather information about the species’s foraging ecology and habitat preference, and assess potential threats. A minimum 49 Spoon-billed Sandpipers were seen at three locations. Foraging birds displayed a marked preference for firm sandy intertidal mudflats with a thin layer of soft mud collecting in ripples, spending 98% of their time feeding within small pools left by the receding tide, singly or in small groups. Shorebird hunting, recently identified as a significant threat to Spoon-billed Sandpiper in Myanmar, was found in some areas. Our preliminary surveys yielded variable catch rates and overall prevalence, but suggest that hunting may have decreased locally since advocacy work was conducted in 2009. We discuss other plausible threats to Spoon-billed Sandpiper and their intertidal habitats, concentrating on large-scale infrastructure development and widespread small-scale habitat conversion. Our surveys covered only a fraction of potentially suitable intertidal habitats and were largely confined to known sites. We therefore list priority research actions designed to elucidate the true status of Spoon-billed Sandpiper in Bangladesh and allow priorities to be set for conservation actions identified in the species’s action plan. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://orientalbirdclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Bird-Spoon-billed-Sandpiper.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
