Hi all
The Lincolnshire Bird Club supported an expedition organised by Jez Bird, Rob Martin and myself to Bangladesh this spring, so I wanted to take this opportunity both to highlight our findings and thank the club (all your good selves!) for contributing to this research.
Our findings and reccomendations were published in Fortail 25 - PDF available here:
http://www.orientalbirdclub.org/publica ... il/26.htmland our expedition 'diary' was serialised on Birdguides, which also contributed financially to the expedition see:
http://www.birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?a=2029 and
http://www.birdguides.com/webzine/artic ... t=1&a=2066Follow-up work from the expedition has already begun, and through a BOU grant funded proposal one of our in-country collaborators - Sayam Chowdury has just recently completed a series of interviews with local bird catchers, who reported taking 22 SbS between October 2009 and April 2010. This suggests that hunting pressure here, as well as in Myanmar may be responsible for declines in this species and we are in the process of completing a large review on the impact of subsistence hunting on shorebirds in Asia. Given the nature of the other rather inexorable threats that this species faces - such as climate change and habitat destruction and degredation across its wintering and passage range, the revelation that hunting is a major threat is at least something that can be tackled and hopefully stopped. Some hope at least then for a bird that could be gone in decades.
Thanks
Alex
(ps for anyone wanting to see any more pics, then a more animated expedition account can be found at:
http://www.freewebs.com/punkbirder/bangladesh2010.htm)
_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecologyManchester Metropolitan University
Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University
http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm@Alexander_Lees
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