When in 2006 the second winter search Expedition of the SBS Task Force found 8 SBS in Teknaf at the southern tip of Bangladesh, we looked across to Myanmar and dreamt of going there to continue our search. Gillian Bunting, the GIS expert in our team, now working for BirdLife International, zoomed in some remote sensing maps and pointed to Nan Thar Island as a very promising site.
The famous Spoon-billed Sandpiper Lime 27 returning for the sixth winter to Nan Thar. Photo © Ren Noe Sou
Miraculously, in 2008 we managed to get permission and access was granted to visit this remote coastal site together with our country partner BANCA. During our first expedition we discovered Nan Thar Island hosting at least 34 SBS and the Mayyu Estuary opposite 27 Indian Skimmers. We managed to visit the island each year until 2013 when the Rohingya crisis started and foreigners were no longer allowed to visit the island.
In 2009 we learned that the population was declining rapidly. Having Ren Noe Soe as a local guide from Sittwe, the regional capital helped us to find out that hunting and trapping were systemic and threatening the remaining and declining winter population on the island. Together with Ren we negotiated a hunting stop with the local people and signed an agreement with the local chief Yein already during the survey. Over the past ten years we trained a small group of local birdwatchers under the lead of Ren Noe Soe, who is regularly monitoring the area on behalf of the SBS Task Force and guarding the precious island and its fragile biodiversity from poachers and resuming hunters.
Ren Noe Soe and village chief Yein in 2009 on Nan Thar Island © Christoph Zöckler
Local conservation group under the lead of Ren (right) in Nov 2019 © Ren Noe Soe
We are very pleased to see the hard work of twelve years resulting now in the area designated as Myanmar’s 6th Ramsar site. We like to thank the Lighthouse Foundation, the International Conservation Fund of Canada (ICFC) and the Rainforest Trust for their financial support and we congratulate the government of Myanmar for its continuous commitment to conserving its important coastal wetlands.
Prepared by Christoph Zöckler, Coordinator EAAFP SBS Task Force & Pyae Phyo Aung, SBS Task Force Myanmar focal point.
Related news from Ramsar Secretariat for the announcement, click [here].
Spoon-billed Sandpiper labeled “CU” returning to Nan Thar for the fifth consecutive winter in 2019. Photo© Ren Noe Soe
