What's on the front burner for international waterbird conservation in the Asia-Pacific?

To find out, you may want to read a short note recently published in the Journal Oryx, about the progress made on waterbird conservation (including seabirds) during the East-Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) 9th Meeting of the Partners in Singapore, this January. The article highlights emerging priorities and is the 3rd in a series of summaries from the 8th and 7th EAAFP Meeting of the Partners. 

One of the EAAFP efforts I will be leading - as a member of the Seabird Working Group - involves an apparent lack of standardized monitoring of waterbirds in the flyway, particularly for shorebirds in South-east Asia and for the flyway's breeding seabirds. As part of my PhD thesis, I will carry out a flyway-wide analysis of population trends and knowledge gaps. If you have or know of seabird colony monitoring efforts in South East Asia (i.e., surveyed 2+ times with comparable methods), please get in touch! 

Gallo-Cajiao, E., Jackson, M.V., Avery-Gomm, S. and Fuller, R.A. (2017) ‘Singapore hosts international efforts for conserving migratory waterbirds in the Asia-Pacific’, Oryx, 51(2), pp. 206–207. doi: 10.1017/S0030605317000163.

"The Critically Endangered Chinese crested tern (Thalasseus bernsteini), thought to be extinct for over 60 years before its rediscovery in 2000, stood as a beacon of hope, showing what can be achieved through specific actions on the ground." Photo: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_crested_tern_colony.jpg