reporting
Bird conservation reporting: habitat loss, hunting and policy
Reporting on the pressures birds face: habitat lost to development, illegal hunting and trapping, and the campaigns run against both.
The flyway, and the places on it — most of this reporting mapped along one route
Reporting on the pressures birds face, and on the people working against them. Three themes run through it: habitat lost to development, the illegal killing and trapping of migrating birds, and the policy decisions that decide how much of either is allowed to happen.
The largest single strand concerns the Yellow Sea. Shorebirds breeding in Arctic Russia and wintering as far south as Australia depend on intertidal flats in China and the Koreas to refuel halfway, and those flats have been reclaimed at scale. Reclamation at Saemangeum, the proposed tidal power schemes at Incheon and Ganghwa, and the state of the flats at Rudong are covered here, along with the interviews that reported them as they happened.
The second strand is the illegal killing of migrants around the Mediterranean: trapping for ambelopoulia in Cyprus, spring hunting in Malta, and unregulated shooting along the Egyptian coast: together with the campaigns and prosecutions that followed. The third is domestic policy: agricultural subsidy, pesticide licensing, wildlife crime enforcement and the badger cull.
The organisations recur as much as the places. Birds Korea on the Yellow Sea, BirdLife Malta and the Committee Against Bird Slaughter around the Mediterranean, Doğa Derneği on the Turkish rivers, Nature Kenya on the Kinangop grasslands: most of what is known about these situations was established by people working for them, often counting birds nobody was paying them to count.
Much of this reporting maps onto a single migration route. The flyway page draws that route and the places on it, and is the clearest way to see how a decision taken about one estuary reaches a bird on the other side of the world.
- Kinangop grasslands: endangered habitat and conservation
The Kinangop grasslands hold a habitat found nowhere else, and a bird that lives nowhere else. What the loss looks like, and who has worked against it.
- The badger cull and the perturbation problem
A large randomised trial had already shown that culling badgers can spread bovine TB as well as reduce it. The policy proceeded anyway.
- Bird trapping on the Egyptian coast
Kilometres of mist net along the Mediterranean shore, catching migrants as they make landfall, and the visiting hunters who travel to shoot elsewhere.
- The Common Agricultural Policy and the farmland bird decline
Europe's farmland birds have fallen further than any other group, and the biggest single influence on European farming is a subsidy system. They connect.
- Ilisu Dam and Hasankeyf: flooding an 11,000-year-old town
The Ilisu Dam on the Tigris would submerge Hasankeyf, said to meet nine of the ten UNESCO World Heritage criteria, along with the river habitat around it.
- Incheon and Ganghwa tidal power against the tidal flats
Two proposed tidal power plants at the top of the Yellow Sea, promoted as green infrastructure, would have destroyed internationally important habitat.
- Poisoned Oriental Storks, and a shift in Chinese conservation
An Endangered stork poisoned at a wetland in Tianjin, and the response that followed: rescue, media coverage and public anger from inside China.
- Saemangeum: what happens when a staging site is walled off
A 33km sea wall closed in 2006 and enclosed over 40,000 hectares of tidal flat. What the monitoring showed, and why it defines the Yellow Sea argument.
- Scaly-sided Merganser and the legacy of river engineering
An Endangered duck that needs clean, fast rivers with mature trees along them, and what large-scale river works leave behind.
- Scientific whaling, and what the exemption is for
The Republic of Korea told the IWC it would resume Minke Whale hunting under the research provision. What that clause is, and why it draws criticism.
- Trophy hunting, outrage, and what the photograph does not show
A hunting photograph goes round the world and the argument becomes about one person. The industry behind it is barely touched by that.
- What an open spring hunting season did in Malta
Monitoring camps in 2011 recorded nearly 950 shots outside hunting hours and dozens of protected birds shot at, more than the three previous years.
Notesshort entries, not full articles
- The 5000 Mile Project: running the length of South America
Katharine and David Lowrie ran unsupported from Chile to Venezuela to raise money for conservation and to record the grasslands they crossed.
- Azzam Alwash on restoring the Mesopotamian marshes
The marshes of southern Iraq were drained deliberately in the 1990s. The founder of Nature Iraq on returning in 2003 to try to bring them back.
- BirdLife and the search for breeding Spoon-billed Sandpipers
A 2011 episode on the expedition to northern Russia looking for undiscovered breeding pairs of the Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper.
- Ceri Levy and the Ghosts of Gone Birds
An art exhibition about extinct birds, raising money for BirdLife's Preventing Extinctions Programme and reaching people conservation reporting does not.
- Ceri Levy on what Malta is actually like
A documentary filmmaker's reaction to seeing the illegal shooting of migrants first-hand, recorded shortly after returning.
- Dan Rhoads on birding in Cyprus
An American birder, trained at the Cornell Lab, on watching migration from an island where the birds are both spectacular and heavily persecuted.
- Debbie Pain on the Spoon-billed Sandpiper breeding programme
A 2011 conversation with Dr Debbie Pain of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust on the breeding programme set up as a last resort for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper.
- Geoffrey Saliba on illegal hunting in Malta
A second conversation with BirdLife Malta's campaigns coordinator on the illegal shooting and trapping of migrating birds, and what campaigning costs.
- The Great March of Anatolia: Turkey's rivers and its dams
Engin Yılmaz of Doğa Derneği on Anadolu Vermeyeceğiz, the citizen campaign against a hydroelectric programme spanning thousands of kilometres of river.
- The Incheon tidal power proposal
A tidal barrage proposed on internationally important intertidal habitat near Incheon, and the assessment questions it raised.
- The IUCN Yellow Sea report, and a whaling announcement
An IUCN situation analysis on East Asian intertidal habitats, and Korea's announcement at the IWC that it would resume hunting Minke Whales.
- Mark Avery on whether an individual can make a difference
Recorded after an autumn statement widely read as hostile to environmental regulation, on what one person can actually do.
- Mark Barter and the counting of the Yellow Sea
An Australian shorebird researcher who established, by survey, not argument, how much of the East Asian flyway depended on the Yellow Sea.
- Martin Hellicar on ambelopoulia and bird trapping in Cyprus
Blackcaps trapped in their hundreds of thousands for an illegal delicacy, and the campaign against a trade with a substantial commercial value.
- Matt Shardlow on neonicotinoid insecticides
The chief executive of Buglife on a class of systemic insecticide, what it does beyond its target, and why invertebrate declines are so poorly monitored.
- Nial Moores at the IUCN World Conservation Congress
Recorded shortly before the Republic of Korea hosted the IUCN congress, on what an international conference does and does not change for the tidal flats.
- Simon Tonkin on farmland birds
A conversation on the conservation of farmland birds, and on working with the agricultural systems that determine what survives on them.
- Terry Townshend on illegal mist-netting in China
Millions of birds a year taken in illegal nets, and the Chinese activists documenting and dismantling them.
- Tristan Reid: tattoos, and a walk across Turkey
The Inked Naturalist on drawing attention to Turkey's threatened biodiversity: first with bird tattoos, then with a plan to hike thousands of kilometres.
- Voices from the London march against the badger cull
Short interviews recorded on 1 June 2013 with marchers and campaign organisations opposing the English badger cull.
- What a birdfair is actually for
A large annual gathering that funds a specific conservation project each year, and does several other things that are harder to put on a poster.
Common questions
Why does so much of this concern the Yellow Sea?
Because it is the bottleneck. Shorebirds on the East Asian–Australasian Flyway cannot make the journey between Arctic breeding grounds and southern wintering grounds in one leg, and the intertidal flats of the Yellow Sea are where the majority refuel. Land reclamation there removes the refuelling capacity for birds that breed and winter thousands of kilometres away, which is why a local planning decision has continental consequences.
What is ambelopoulia?
A dish of small songbirds, principally Blackcaps, trapped in autumn in Cyprus using limesticks and mist nets. The trapping is illegal and has substantial commercial value, which is what has made it persistent; the reporting here covers the scale of it and the campaign against it.
Is spring hunting legal in Malta?
Malta has repeatedly opened a spring hunting season under a derogation from the EU Birds Directive, which otherwise prohibits hunting during the return migration. The derogation, the species it covers and the protected birds shot alongside them have all been contested, and the reporting here follows particular seasons rather than summarising the legal position, which has moved.
How are conservation organisations' own figures treated?
They are quoted and attributed. A population estimate or a casualty figure published by a campaigning body is evidence, and saying who published it lets the reader weigh it. Nothing here is presented as an independent measurement when it is an organisation's own count.
What period does this reporting cover?
Mostly 2010 to 2014, when the interviews were recorded and the campaigns described were running. Several of these situations have moved since: the Maltese derogation, the condition of the Rudong flats and enforcement in Cyprus have each changed more than once. Read the accounts as what was established at the time, and check the current position with the organisations named in them.