Chasing an endless summer, one shorebird species undertakes a grueling annual journey from the arctic to the tip of South America and back — a feat increasingly fraught with peril.
The Hudsonian godwit is one of the world’s most remarkable travelers, but its population has plunged 95 percent in four decades due to a complex mix of environmental changes across multiple countries.
It is one of 42 species proposed for international protection at a meeting of parties to the UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) that starts in Brazil today.
Photo: Cornell Lab of Ornithology / AFP
Iconic creatures such as the snowy owl, striped hyena and hammerhead shark are also on the list of animals deemed in danger of extinction and needing conservation by the countries they pass through.
Migratory birds are facing “rapid and dramatic declines,” said ecologist and University of Massachusetts Amherst ornithology professor Nathan Senner, who has studied the Hudsonian godwit for 20 years.
Scientists are still unraveling the mysteries of the shorebird — which can fly up to 11,000km in one stretch without stopping to eat, drink or sleep.
And it is only part of the 30,000km that the godwit travels every year from their breeding grounds in the Arctic to Patagonia, where they spend the southern summer.
To do this “epic flight,” they need “really predictable, abundant food resources” at every step of the journey, Senner said.
That predictability is crumbling.
In the Arctic, shifting spring timing attributed to climate change has created a mismatch between when chicks hatch and the peak availability of insects they feed on.
One of the puzzles Senner is working on is why Hudsonian godwits have begun migrating later by six days than they did a decade ago.
Something “has either disrupted the cues that they use to time their migrations or their ability to successfully and rapidly prepare for the migration,” he said.
In southern Chile, a boom in salmon and oyster farming has led to a build-up of infrastructure and the presence of people in the intertidal zones where they feed.
And in the US, changes in farming practices are making the shallow water wetlands that the godwits rely on rarer and less predictable — meaning they spend more time looking for a place to stop and feed.
“I think that is emblematic of lots of species, that most species can respond to one kind of change, but not a whole bunch of them all at the same time,” Senner said.
“Climate change is taking a heavy toll on species that rely on a ‘geological clock’ for their survival; many are disappearing,” Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources president Rodrigo Agostinho said.
These are some of the issues CMS parties are to tackle at their meeting in Brazil’s biodiversity-rich Pantanal, one of the world’s most important global meetings for wildlife conservation.
These countries are legally obliged to protect species listed as at risk of extinction, conserve and restore their habitats, prevent obstacles to migration and cooperate with other range states.
Nevertheless, among the species listed under CMS, a report released earlier this month showed that 49 percent now have populations that are declining, up from 44 percent two years ago.
CMS executive secretary Amy Fraenkel said most of the species doing worse were birds, such as the Hudsonian godwit.
Migratory species “are essential to healthy ecosystems and a healthy planet,” playing a key role in pollination, pest control and transporting nutrients, she said.
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