As the world looks to tighten up the illegal capture of wildlife, migratory birds are being threatened by widespread and unsustainable hunting across the Asia-Pacific region.
University of Queensland-led research has revealed that three quarters of migratory shorebird species in the region have been hunted since the 1970s.
“Every year, hundreds of thousands of shorebirds, wetland-dependent species, breed across the Arctic and boreal regions, moving south to Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand along a migration corridor known as the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.
“The Flyway spans 22 countries, through which 61 species of shorebirds complete their epic annual migrations some covering up to 25,000 km each year.
The research has been published in Biological Conservation (DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108582) and was a collaboration between 13 institutions across nine countries.
