We’re supporting projects within three of the most used bird migration corridors anywhere on earth: the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF), the Rift Valley/Red Sea Flyway and the Caucasus mountains. And on this day, recognising the natural phenomena of bird migration, it’s important to appreciate the scale and significance of species movements across borders.
The importance of migratory bird flyways is reflected by many of the conservation designations given to key stopover and congregation points. Sites such as Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), Important Bird Areas (IBAs) and the biodiversity value of Ramsar wetland sites are often attributed to the presence of important assemblages of birds such as rare, endemic or threatened species.
While impacts to birds of course come from infrastructure projects that reach great heights such as wind turbines, transmission lines or aviation, we must also consider the end of migratory birds’ journeys and their requirement for sustenance stop overs on route. Many of these birds will be travelling to breeding sites and can form large ground nesting congregations. A number of internationally recognised frameworks and mechanisms are intended to protect important bottlenecks and stopover sites.
Our experience across multiple development sectors has allowed us to identify risks to birds from project activities such as infrastructure design, vegetation clearance, siting of project facilities, plant and vehicle movements and pollution risk to waterbodies.
Questions around bird migration and how it may affect your organisation’s activities and prospective projects may prove key in understanding impacts on biodiversity. Gathering biodiversity baseline data at the right time to capture bird migration behaviour requires advance planning to anticipate which species may be present, what time of year they arrive/depart, their preferred habitat and what specific survey methodologies are required to collect sufficient data. Feel free to reach out for advice from our in-house biodiversity team and the opportunity to access our vast network of international specialists.
The focus of this WMBD is the importance of insects for migratory birds, highlighting the concerns related to decreasing populations of insects. The presence of certain insects can be used to indicate healthy/functional habitat that’s able to provide significant biomass for birds to feed on. With continued removal of natural habitats and widespread use of industrial chemicals, anthropogenic pressures on insect populations not only impact birds but also ourselves. Ecosystem services provided by insects are crucial to human survival through, for example, pollination of crops and the recycling of organic matter. It’s an important reminder of why we work so hard to avoid, minimise and mitigate our impact on biodiversity.
