The critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper spotted again at Cihu Wetland in Kinmen!

▲ The endangered "spoon-billed sandpiper" spotted again in Kinmen. (Photo / Provided by Kinmen National Park Headquarters)



Kinmen National Park has been promoting the conservation of waterbird and wetland ecosystems. Since 2012, the spoon-billed sandpiper has been spotted in Cihu Wetland for three consecutive years, indicating that the Cihu ecosystem provides a stable and suitable habitat for various endangered migratory birds during their stopovers.

According to Researcher Jiang ZhongyP, the research team recently discovered two spoon-billed sandpipers foraging on the mudflats of Cihu during a survey. Later, veteran birder Mr. Xu Jinxi took photos of a spoon-billed sandpiper with a coded leg flag (light green flag, code 8) and reported it to the research team. The team then forwarded the information to researchers involved in the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Conservation Breeding Action Plan under the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). It was found that this particular spoon-billed sandpiper was one of the chicks artificially bred in the field by the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Conservation Task Force in 2012 in the Chukotka region of the Russian Far East.

According to reports from the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Conservation Breeding Action, the individual with a light green leg flag coded 8, spotted on the Cihu mudflats, was one of the chicks hatched on July 14, 2012, and released into the wild on August 10, 2012. It was last observed at the release site on August 17, 2012, and had not been seen since. Therefore, domestic and international research teams are very pleased to learn that one of the individuals bred through conservation efforts has been spotted again in the wild. This is a great encouragement for waterbird conservation efforts, and they hope it will successfully return to its breeding grounds to reproduce.