EAAFP Youth Task Force

The East Asian–Australasian Flyway Partnership Youth Task Force, a network of young leaders and advocates across the flyway region, calls for proactive, inclusive, participatory, and urgent actions and initiatives for the protection of our migratory waterbirds and their habitats.

Our migratory waterbirds are vital to our lives, providing ecological, cultural, and socioeconomic services. Despite the value they bring, they are experiencing severe threats, reducing populations and worsening their conservation status brought by habitat loss, pollution, and the intensifying impacts of the climate crisis. This year’s theme of the World Migratory Bird Day – ‘Shared Spaces: Creating Bird-Friendly Cities and Communities’, reminds us of our shared responsibility to make urban spaces safer for birds and better for all life.

Our Call to Action:

• Create multiple blue-green infrastructures to enhance ecological connectivity in urban areas. Creation and maintenance of different types of green spaces and water bodies provide food sources to the migratory waterbirds, underscoring these important areas that serve as shelters for foraging and breeding activities.
• Incorporate Bird-Safe Infrastructure in Cities Across the Flyway. It is high time to advocate sustainable and bird-friendly building designs to prevent unnecessary and accidental deaths of our migratory birds from bird-window collisions and light pollution — for existing buildings, it is suggested to apply anti-collision visual markers onto glass and regulate the design and timing of artificial lighting.
• Engage Communities in Conservation. Education and empowerment of youth and local communities to participate in citizen science activities to promote research and conservation initiatives in addressing issues affecting the migratory waterbirds and promote monitoring of their populations, such as using eBird to record bird sightings.

We are committed to taking location actions and collaborating with different sectors and communities across our borders to ensure that our cities are havens – not hazards to our precious migratory waterbirds. Together, we can transform our urban landscapes into thriving ecosystems where both humans and birds live and flourish in harmony.

References:

Chen, Y., Rasool, M. A., Hussain, S., Meng, S., Yao, Y., Wang, X., & Liu, Y. (2023). Bird community structure is driven by urbanization level, blue-green infrastructure configuration and precision farming in Taizhou, China. The Science of the total environment, 859(Pt 1), 160096. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.160096

Hong Kong Bird Watching Society (HKBWS). (2024). Report on Hong Kong Bird-window Collisions. Retrieved from https://www.hkbws.org.hk/cms/phocadownload/Conservation/BWC2024_HKBWSc.pdf