Invisible Connections
Why Migrating Shorebirds Need the Yellow Sea
|
240 Colour photographs
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Description | Features | Author Information | Related Titles
Description
Each year, invisible to the naked eye, millions of migrating shorebirds fly from Australasia towards the tidal flats of the Yellow Sea bordering China and Korea.
Each flock is made up of individuals using whatever strategies they can muster to
endure the flights, weather the storms and find safe havens to rest and refuel on
their long journeys to the breeding grounds in Siberia or Alaska. Once there,
successful reproduction of as many individuals as possible is key to survival.
Shorebird migration is one of nature's most spectacular phenomena, creating surprising and hitherto poorly understood links between countries, habitats and people. Jan van de Kam's beautiful images, together with the compelling words of his colleagues, illustrate the magnitude of the feats performed by migrating shorebirds and the vital need for the connections that bind them to habitats to be sustained.
This book invites you to discover the risks inherent in a shorebird's migratory lifestyle and the additional challenges created by expanding human populations. It reveals the crucial role that the shoreline of the Yellow Sea plays in shorebird migration and highlights the need for this unique and threatened habitat to be saved for future generations of birds and people.
- Outstanding photography
- Important conservation issues linking USA, Asia and Australasia
- Life histories of shorebirds explained by an international team of experts
- A thorough explanation of why staging areas are so important to shorebirds, and why loss of tidal flat habitats in the Yellow Sea is the greatest threat faced by our shorebirds
Author Information
Jan van de Kam is a Dutch wildlife photographer with a lifetime’s experience of photographing, filming and writing about plants, landscapes and animals, and an extensive list of publications to his name. In the past few years Jan has focussed primarily on shorebirds, spending considerable amounts of time photographing them at all stages of their worldwide migratory journeys.
Phil Battley is a zoology lecturer in the Ecology Group at Massey University, New Zealand. His main interests are in how birds manage to migrate vast distances and why individuals vary in their fuelling and migratory behaviour. Most of his work has been on knots (both Great and Red) and Bar-tailed Godwits in New Zealand and Australia, with satellite – and geolocator – tracking of godwits being a recent research focus.
Danny Rogers is a shorebird biologist for the Arthur Rylah Institute (Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria, Australia), and chairs the scientific committee of the Australasian Wader Studies Group. His lifelong interest in shorebirds and how they choose their habitats intensified as he did a PhD on their ecology in north-western Australia, and he has since focussed on shorebird studies in coastal Victoria and South Korea, where he co-led the Saemangeum Shorebird Monitoring Program.
Brian McCaffery has studied Arctic-breeding birds for three decades. He worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service as the non-game biologist at Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge for twenty years, focusing primarily on shorebirds. Now serving as the refuge’s education specialist, he works with Native American students exploring careers in biology and brings international researchers and artists to the refuge to promote shorebird conservation through science and art.
Nial Moores is co-founder and Director of Birds Korea, a Korean-based organisation dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats in Korea and the wider Yellow Sea Eco-region. Birds Korea works for the conservation of birds and their habitats through research, education and public-awareness raising activities, consultation and collaboration, and well-focused advocacy. Nial has lived and breathed shorebird conservation for over fifteen years – first in Japan, and then South Korea where he has now lived for ten years, and is one of the most experienced field birders in Eastern Asia.
Jae-Sang Hong is a professor of benthic ecology in the Department of Oceanography at Inha University, South Korea, with a particular interest in the ecology of benthos on tidal flats. He has worked extensively in these habitats in the United States, Europe, Japan and, especially during the last three decades, on the South Korean coast, focussing on the problems of how benthic animals are influenced by habitat change.
Ju Yung-Ki is a conservation activist, with a life-long connection with the tidal flat systems of the west coast of South Korea. His interests are broad, and encompass the significance of these tidal flats from cultural and ecological perspectives. He works closely both with scientists, and with the fishing communities that make a living from the shallow seas and mudflats systems in and around Saemangeum.
Jan Lewis lives in Broome, NW Australia surrounded by shorebirds, and has close connections to Broome Bird Observatory and the research work undertaken in Roebuck Bay. She has travelled widely and has volunteered on a number of shorebird research projects, both on the Asian-Australasian Flyway and in West Africa. This is her first venture in text editing.
Theunis Piersma is an evolutionary biologist and leads research teams at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and the University of Gronigen. His studies focus on shorebird energetics, predator-prey relationships on tidal flats and the link between resource abundance and population dynamics in habitats as far ranging as the far northern tundra and the tidal flats of South America. Theunis has strong research links with Australia and New Zealand.
Related Titles
|
|
|
|
|
|
