Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force · News Bull · No 22 · May 2020 Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force News Bulletin No 22 · May 2020 Contents Foreword from the Editor .................................................................................................................................. 3 Guest Editorial: Scott Hecker, Director of Bird Conservation, ICFC ............................................................ 4 Message from the EAAFP Secretariat: Doug Watkins, Chief Executive ....................................................... 6 Spoon-billed Sandpiper Census in China, January 2020 ............................................................................... 7 A new Site for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper in Vietnam ............................................................................... 12 Gulf of Mottama – Spoon-billed Sandpiper midwinter Census January 2020 .......................................... 17 Save the long Journey from Russia to Myanmar ........................................................................................... 23 News from Pak Thale Nature Reserve ............................................................................................................ 24 Updates from ICFC supported Projects in the wintering Areas .................................................................. 26 Summary of SBS Winter Counts 2020 ............................................................................................................ 29 Hunting pressure on Shorebirds in Kamchatka ............................................................................................ 31 Spoon-billed Sandpiper at WWT Slimbridge ................................................................................................ 35 Big Banner for a tiny Bird ................................................................................................................................. 36 News in Brief ...................................................................................................................................................... 37 From the Archives ............................................................................................................................................. 39 The last Page ....................................................................................................................................................... 40 Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Fucheng, Leizhou Li Cheng Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force · News Bull · No 22 · May 2020 2 © EAAFP SBS Task Force The Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force (SBS TF) News Bulletin is a regular, half-yearly update of activities of the SBS Task Force of the East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP). The News Bulletin is edited by Dr Christoph Zöckler, Coordinator of the EAAFP SBS Task Force with assistance from Sayam Chowdhury, Bangladesh. Mission: The East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force (SBS TF) aims to coordinate the conservation activities identified in the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) Single Species Ac- tion Plan for the species, which was commissioned by BirdLife International. The activities in the Action Plan are regularly reviewed and updated by all Flyway Members and a growing network of active supporters and groups in the Flyway countries, and beyond. The Task Force originates from the establishment of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Recovery Team (SBS RT) in 2004, when several partners active in the conservation of this globally threatened wader met in Edinburgh. With the grow- ing level of activity, the finalization of the Action Plan in 2008 and a growing network of partners, organisations and supporters the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force (SBS TF) was formed at the East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) meeting in Korea in February 2010. In December 2010, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force (SBS TF) was officially endorsed as one of the first species Task Forces by the Partnership under the EAAFP Shorebird Working Group. Implementing organisation for the SBS TF is BirdLife International through its partner Birds Russia. It is chaired by the Government Partner of Russia. Task Force members consist of the EAAFP Govern- ment Partners of key range states for the species and international conservation organisations. These are: the Russian Federation, Japan, People’s Republic of China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Union of Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India, the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust (WWT), Wetlands International, a representative of the EAAFP Shorebird Working Group, the Mangrove Conservation Fund (MCF), Fauna Flora International (FFI) and experts and conservation organisations from principal range states and other partners. We are grateful to the Manfred-Hermsen-Stiftung, Bremen, the RSPB and NABU, MCF and the International Conservation Fund of Canada (ICFC) for their continued support of the SBS Task Force and Spoon-billed Sandpiper projects across the range states. Chair: Dr Evgeny Syroechkovskiy [email protected] Coordinator: Dr Christoph Zöckler (Manfred Hermsen Foundation) [email protected] Assistant Coordinator: Sayam U. Chowdhury Conservation Biologist, Dhaka, Bangladesh [email protected] Layout by Matthias Fanck Graphic Design, Zell im Fichtelgebirge, Germany · German SBS Support Group Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force · News Bull · No 22 · May 2020 3 Foreword from the Editor Dr Christoph Zöckler · Manfred Hermsen Foundation, SBS TF Coordinator · May 2020 ovid -19 has even impacted the Spoon-billed CSandpiper – not directly I believe, but of course indirectly in many ways, for example as illustrated in our Last Page. The work of our Task Force was and is, hampered by the lockdown restrictions. Our friends at WWT in Slimbridge are furloughed. The spring surveys in Jiangsu were just able to resume again, but it is not yet clear if our Russian friends can go to the breeding grounds this year. No for- eigners will likely join them anyway this season. For the first time in almost ten years our close partner ‘Heritage Expeditions’ will not be able to visit the Kamchatka and Chukotka coasts. But, what most of us would consider impossible in the current circumstances might not yet be impos- sible for Evgeny’s team in the ‘Land of Unlimited Impossibilities’. We will need to report in our next Christoph taking a “back seat” behind SBS TF Chair issue if our Russian friends made it to the breeding Evgeny Syroechkovskiy, Meinypil’gyno 2019 grounds or not. This issue will focus on the winter counts. We Kamchatka though illustrates how much work there were lucky with a good coverage and in China the still is ahead of us in a region which is difficult to surveys were completed just in time before the early access. lockdown in January. Winter surveys covered a huge area of over 40 sites, most in southern China. The virus also laid bare the treacherous situations in This was only possible with the support by the Asian’s wet markets and a lot of progress has been Mangrove Conservation Fund (MCF) and the In- made on wildlife trade legislation in China and ternational Conservation Fund of Canada (ICFC). Vietnam in particular. This is of course good news We are very grateful for their continued support. well beyond the Spoon-billed sandpiper and other Please also see our guest foreword in this issue by shorebirds and we hope to provide more details in Scott Hecker. the upcoming issues of our newsletter. Both MCF and ICFC have also been supporting our Anniversaries now seem to come faster and faster, hunting mitigation work on the wintering grounds. but it is now 20 years ago, when we encountered Alongside many other NGOs and foundations we our first Spoon-billed Sandpiper on a beach in Chu- have made big strides in stopping or limiting the kotka in June 2000 and our long story began. Enjoy hunting pressure on the flyway over the past ten reading! years. The exclusive article about wader hunting in Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force · News Bull · No 22 · May 2020 4 Guest Foreword Saving the World’s favorite Shorebird Scott Hecker, MSc, Director of Bird Conservation, ICFC nyone reading this newsletter surely has a Avisual memory of the first time they saw a photo of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper, with its unique bill. For the luckier few, the memory of the moment they observed this bird in the wild. I have yet to be so lucky, but my first “view” of a Spoonie was wonderful, as captured so serenely in the video footage by Gerrit Vyn at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In January 2016, Anne Lambert, founder of the International Conservation Fund of Canada, hired me to direct ICFC’s Shorebird Conservation Initiative. Apparently, Anne had the Spoon-billed Sandpiper on her “to do” list for some time, and as part of my first official duties, I was to see if there was something ICFC might do to assist in this species’ conservation. Her writ- ten suggestion included a link to the video clip of nothing but the Spoonies themselves on the windblown mostly frozen tundra of Chukotka, Russia going about nesting and chick rearing. It only took this 5-minute video to convince me too that this was a species that could use some help. I was startled to soon learn from leading shorebird conservationists that there were predictions that The International Conservation Fund of Canada Spoon-billed Sandpiper could go extinct by 2025. (ICFC) supports conservation