Back in January I posted a podcast with Jim Lawrence, Manager of BirdLife International’s Preventing Extinctions Programme, and Chris Collins, a tour leader with Heritage Expeditions (a joint Species Champion since August 2010 for the Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper) about a groundbreaking trip to eastern Russia to look for new colonies of this iconic and unique shorebird (TN18 BirdLife, Heritage, and Spoon-billed Sandpipers).
At the same time I also recorded an interview with Dr Christoph Zöckler, co-ordinator of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Species Recovery Group, who was going to be the lead scientist on the Heritage trip. In what was a remarkably open and frank interview he told me a little about a hitherto unannounced Spoon-billed Sandpiper captive breeding programme and what he hoped to achieve on the summer Heritage trip. I thought – of course – that the resulting podcast would be of huge interest to birders everywhere, but – because I felt that announcing a multi-agency Spoon-billed Sandpiper captive breeding programme on Talking Naturally may cause difficulties further down the line – I took the decision not to release the podcast. Yesterday though (June 3rd) both WWT and the RSPB published press-releases talking about their roles in the captive breeding programme, and now that the news is out I’ve decided to release the podcast as I think it gives a really fascinating insight into the status of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper and why such a drastic step as captive breeding was considered…
Advice: This podcast has been produced by Talking Naturally to support conservation. No fees or benefits of any kind have been charged or accepted by Talking Naturally. Bandwidth costs for this podcast are sponsored by Digital Spring.
Show Notes
More on Spoon-billed Sandpipers on Talking Naturally:
- TN18 BirdLife, Heritage, and Spoon-billed Sandpipers
- Spoon-billed Sandpiper Series: Part One
- Spoon-billed Sandpiper Series: Part Two – interview with Christoph Zöckler
- Spoon-billed Sandpiper Series: Part Three – interview with Nial Moores
- Interview: David Sibley on the Spoon-billed Sandpiper
Flagged Spoon-billed Sandpiper chick, Chutotka
Photograph copyright Christoph Zöckler
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Very interesting – let’s hope it’s not too late……………I’m surprised at the availability of any information at all from Myanmar. The project poses some interesting practical issues – wader chicks are precocious and so are active as soon as they hatch so what sort of problems are they going to have with juvenile birds and their feeding behaviour, also do the parents need to be part of this? One would think so. Also, as stated on the podcast these birds will be from the original clutch and not from a secondary laying which is what these schemes normally do e.g. Red Kite and Great Bustard thus avoiding ‘imprinting’ problems and using ‘excess’ chicks and not the originals. I wonder that by using this method it might be a bit risky Let’s hope they know what they are undertaking – I wish them luck……
Hi Laurie
Thanks for the comment.
I’m interviewing Dr Debbie Pain at Slimbridge in the next few days, and I’ll be very interested to get answers for the questions that I have about the project myself – a project which has (I think) huge implications for the direction conservation might be going in, especially if it’s successful. If a highly migratory shorebird that is losing its staging and wintering sites and whose previously isolated breeding areas are being opened up through climate change, can be saved this way, who knows where captive breeding might be used next…
impressive and astonishing bird
keep going!