{"id":29556,"date":"2024-10-24T14:08:50","date_gmt":"2024-10-24T05:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=29556"},"modified":"2024-10-24T14:08:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-24T05:08:52","slug":"the-1st-east-asian-australasian-flyway-science-symposium-in-beijing-october-16-18-2024-and-the-birds-of-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/?p=29556","title":{"rendered":"The 1st East Asian Australasian Flyway Science Symposium in Beijing, October 16-18, 2024, and the birds of Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Protecting migratory birds is a cross-border, multinational effort of ornithologists, activists and diplomats. It is also a challenge for science: our knowledge of bird migration still has many gaps, though scientists all around the globe, and also around the East Asian Australasian Flyway, which encompasses Korea, are trying to fill these gaps. One effort to do so was the establishment of the EAAFP Science Unit at Beijing Forestry University. For several years now the science unit works, but due to the pandemic larger outreach activities have not yet been possible. This changed with the 1st<\/sup> East Asian Australasian Science Symposium held in Beijing from October 16-18, 2024. Around 200 people, mostly scientists, but also wetland managers, activists and others, participated in the meaning. For two days, issues of bird migration in the East Asian Australasian Flyway were discussed. The Korean Peninsula is located very centrally in the flyway, forming the one side of the Yellow Sea coastline, with China forming the other. Millions of birds depend on the tidal flat habitats in the Yellow Sea for migration, but due to excessive tidal flat reclamation in the past this has become a challenge for many of them. This is the reason why the number of endangered birds in the EAAF is higher than in all other flyways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the participation of Korea was rather poor \u2013 beside a team from Ghent University in Songdo, which gave an interesting talk about tidal flats and climate change, only the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea team (including me as a Birds Korea member) was there, none of the ornithologists or bird specialists in Korea. North Korea, though invited, was equally absent. This is deplorable, since there were a number of highly relevant issues discussed: cross-cutting issues like climate change and migration, Avian influenza etc., best practices, e.g. in rehabilitation of tidal flat sites, species specific discussions, like those on Spoonbilled Sandpiper, Nordmann\u00b4s Greenshank and Blackfaced Spoonbill and issues of the management of protected areas, from large areas like the Yellow Sea (Yancheng process) to smaller protected wetlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conference was a great opportunity to rebuild old connections and start new ones, exchange views and learn new things about bird migration. But the most important result was probably the rekindling of the spirit of cooperation among the scientists participating. Beijing Forestry University, which organized the conference, has a grand strategy to foster new talent in bird science, building a large international platform for scientific exchanges and better protect wetlands in China and along the flyway. Even more cooperation would certainly also benefit scientists on the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the conference also made clear the overlapping nature of flyways: China is included in four of the world\u00b4s nine flyways (Western Pacific, EAAF, Central Asian Flyway and the West Asia- Eastern African flyway). In acknowledgement of that, Hanns-Seidel-Foundation organized a special session on China and the Central Asian Flyway, which recently became more organized under the Convention of Migratory Species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 1st<\/sup> East Asian Australasian Flyway Science Symposium in Beijing, October 16-18, 2024, and the birds of Korea<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Tidal flats have many important functions. Besides being important for birds, they also play an important role in CO2 natural storage, as a presentation from the University of Ghent Songdo Campus in Korea explained. Presentation by Dr. Jihae Park of Ghent University Global Campus (\u00a9 Bernhard Seliger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Many presentations at the 1st<\/sup> Science Symposium of the EAAFP dealt with species found in Korea, like the Blackfaced Spoonbill. Presentation by Yat-tung Yu, Hong Kong Bird Watching Society. \u00a0(\u00a9 Bernhard Seliger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Participants of the 1st<\/sup> EAAFP Science Symposium in Beijing, October 16-18, 2024. (Conference photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Many presentations at the 1st<\/sup> Science Symposium of the EAAFP dealt with species found in Korea, like the Blackfaced Spoonbill. Presentation by Yat-tung Yu, Hong Kong Bird Watching Society. \u00a0(\u00a9 Bernhard Seliger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Workshop on the Central Asian Flyway, organized by Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea, with many experts from Bangladesh and China, Hong Kong, the International Crane Foundation, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan \u2013 and Dr. Nial Moores, founder and president of Birds Korea, with a video presentation! (Conference photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Protecting migratory birds is a cross-border, multinational effort of ornithologists, activists and diplomats. It is also a challenge for science: our knowledge of bird migration still has many gaps, though scientists all around the globe, and also around the East … read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":29561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29563,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556\/revisions\/29563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdskoreablog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}