Submission on the draft wildlife conservation plan for migratory shorebirds (2014)

Review of the Draft Wildlife Conservation Plan for Migratory Shorebirds

Australia has an obligation to protect migratory shorebirds under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999), as well as in several bilateral and other international agreements. For the conservation plan for migratory shorebirds to have an effect on country-wide shorebird populations, a range of factors must be addressed in the final plan, including:

1. Recognition of the international factors influencing shorebird populations, which necessitates significant ongoing collaborative management across the entire East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF);

2. The lack of basic ecological knowledge of the majority of shorebird species in the EAAF, particularly their distribution and habitat use while in Australia and internationally, and;

3. The diverse and widespread nature of severe threatening processes that appear to be driving the declines of shorebirds in Australia.

Below we provide specific comment on whether these issues have been adequately addressed in the draft plan.

Vision and objectives

The four objectives listed in the draft plan seem adequate as an overall purpose of the plan. However, the specific wording of the objectives do not complement the vision of the plan, which is to ensure ecologically sustainable populations of migratory shorebirds remain distributed across their range and diversity of habitats in Australia, and throughout the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF). To achieve this vision of sustainable populations, in addition to local management in Australia an international focus of management must be taken by all countries in the flyway. We suggest several changes to the objectives that reflect the need for such international management and cooperation in the conservation of migratory shorebirds in the EAAF. As Australia is within the EAAF, our suggested changes (in italic) sufficiently cover the original objectives stated in the draft plan.

Recommendations:

• Objective 2: Wetland habitat in Australia across the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, on which migratory shorebirds depend, is protected and conserved.
• Objective 3: Anthropogenic threats to migratory shorebirds in Australia across the East Asian-Australasian Flyway are minimised or, where possible, eliminated.
• Objective 4: Knowledge gaps in migratory shorebird ecology in Australia across the East Asian-Australasian Flyway are identified and addressed to inform decision makers, land managers and the public.

To read more, download the full submission below.