Birds dealing with change: Mapping migration routes can lead to conservation areas

[PhysOrg]

Tracking migratory birds that carry tiny satellite transmitters in featherlight 'backpacks," can teach us a lot about change in the environment. It may also point at possibilities to avoid loss of biodiversity. That is an important message in the Ph.D.-thesis that Ying Chi Chan, a Ph.D. candidate of the University of Groningen, based at the Royal NIOZ (Netherlands Institute for Sea Research), defends on May 28th 2021. "Bar-tailed godwits with transmitters on their backs, directed us to an important area along the coast of the Yellow Sea at Dafeng-Dongtai-Rudong, where many birds roost and feed. Showing the importance of this area for migratory birds led to a halt of intended land-claim in the tidal zone of the Yellow Sea," Chan says.

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