Achievements,challenges,and recommendations for waterbird conservation in China's coastal wetlands

China’s coastal wetlands provide breeding,migration stopover,and wintering habitats for about 230 waterbird species,which is more than a quarter of all waterbirds in the world.Large-scale and high intensity human activities have resulted in serious loss and degradation of coastal wetlands over the past half century,causing population declines in many waterbirds.Through a literature review and expert surveys,this article reviews conservation measures taken in recent decades to protect waterbirds in China’s coastal wetlands and provides recommendations for future conservation action from three aspects:policy and administration,habitat conservation and management,and multiparty participation.Over the past decades,many conservation legislation,regulations and action plans at the national level and more site-specific measures and interventions have been implemented,with notable improvement in the effectiveness in policy making and multi-stakeholder participation.Accordingly,some threats to waterbirds have been mitigated and many key sites for waterbirds have been designated as strictly protected nature reserves.However,some critical issues still remain,mostly related to habitat conservation and management,such as coastal wetland restoration,control of invasive Spartina alterniflora,control of environmental pollution,and improvement of artificial habitat quality.We highlight that protecting natural tidal wetlands and improving habitat quality are critical for the conservation of coastal waterbirds,especially those highly dependent on the intertidal wetlands.China has demonstrated strong commitment to ecological conservation and restoration for the future,in terms of both funding and policies for biodiversity and wetland ecosystems.It is important that this commitment to conserve coastal waterbirds is supported continuously by science-and evidence-based decisions and actions.

Corrigendum to“Achievements,challenges,and recommendations for waterbird conservation in China's coastal wetlands”[Avian Res.14(2023)100123]

The authors regret that Fig.1 and its caption should be replaced as below.

Predicting the non-breeding distributions of the two Asian subspecies of Black-tailed Godwit using morphological information

Until recently,Limosa limosa melanuroides was thought to be the only subspecies of Black-tailed Godwit in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.For this reason,all previous occurrences and counts of Black-tailed Godwits in the flyway have been assigned to melanuroides.However,a larger-bodied subspecies,bohaii,has recently been discovered in the flyway.As a result,the occurrence of Black-tailed Godwits in the flyway needs to be reconsidered such that the specific distribution of each subspecies becomes known.To this end,we developed a simple discriminant function to assign individuals to subspecies based on their bill and wing length.Cross-validation with individuals known to be bohaii or melanuroides,based on molecular analysis,showed the developed function to be 97.7%accurate.When applied to measurements of godwits captured at 22 sites across 9 countries in East-Southeast Asia and Australia,we found that bohaii and melanuroides occurred at most sites and overlapped in their distribution from Kamchatka to Australia.We examined photos from all along the flyway to verify this surprising result,confirming that both subspecies co-occur in most locations.Based on these results,we hypothesise that bohaii and melanuroides from the west of their breeding ranges mostly migrate over Chinese mainland.Birds of both subspecies from the east of their ranges are expected to migrate along the Pacific Ocean.We encourage ringing groups in East-Southeast Asia and Australia to use this simple method to keep adding knowledge about Black-tailed Godwits in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.

Ecological impact of land reclamation on Jiangsu coast(China):A novel ecotope assessment for Tongzhou Bay

China’s continuous and rapid economic growth has led to the reclamation of large sections of the intertidal mud coast in combination with port construction,such as that of the proposed Tongzhou Bay port on the Jiangsu coast.These reclamations threaten the local ecosystem services.An ecotope distribution map was created and a hydrodynamic numerical model of Tongzhou Bay was set up to quantify the impacts of reclamation on the ecosystem.Based on the field data and model results,several abiotic features were classified into 11 ecotopes and visualized in an ecotope map of the Tongzhou Bay ecosystem.Validation with spatial distributions of two threatened shorebird species(bar-tailed godwit and great knot) showed confirmation with the mid-range and low-range littoral zones(inundated from 40% to 100% of a tidal cycle),indicating the importance of the areas with these conditions to these populations.Overlaying the ecotope map with recent and proposed land reclamation schemes revealed a loss of ecotopes,composed of the high-range(42%),mid-range(48%),and low-range(38%) littoral habitats,corresponding to a 44%-45% loss of the most important ecotopes for bar-tailed godwit and great knot(mid-range and low-range littoral zones).These results confirm the applicability of the novel ecotope assessment approach in practice.