A Hudsonian godwit on Minimoy Island in the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, Massachusetts, U.S. on August 21, 2017.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Chasing an countless summer season, one shorebird species undertakes a gruelling annual journey from the Arctic to the tip of South America and again — a feat more and more fraught with peril.
The Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica) is one among the world’s most exceptional travellers, however its inhabitants has plunged 95% in 4 many years as a result of a complicated mixture of environmental adjustments throughout a number of nations.
It is one among 42 species proposed for worldwide safety at a assembly of events to the UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) that begins in Brazil on March 23.
Iconic creatures like the snowy owl — of Harry Potter fame — striped hyena and hammerhead shark are additionally on the listing deemed at risk of extinction and needing conservation by the nations they move via.
Migratory birds are going through “rapid and dramatic declines,” stated Nathan Senner, an ecologist and ornithology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has studied the Hudsonian godwit for 20 years.
Scientists are nonetheless unravelling the mysteries of the shorebird, which may fly as much as 11,000 km in a single stretch with out stopping to eat, drink or sleep.
And it’s only a part of the 30,000 km that the godwit travels yearly from their breeding grounds in the Arctic to Patagonia the place they spend the southern summer season.
In order to do that “epic flight,” they want “really predictable, abundant food resources” at each step of the journey, Senner advised AFP.
That predictability is crumbling. In the Arctic, shifting spring timing attributed to local weather change has created a mismatch between when chicks hatch and the peak availability of bugs they feed on.
One of the puzzles Senner is at the moment engaged on is why Hudsonian godwits have begun migrating later by six days than they did a decade in the past.
Something “has either disrupted the cues that they use to time their migrations or their ability to successfully and rapidly prepare for the migration,” he stated.
In southern Chile, a growth in salmon and oyster farming has led to a build-up of infrastructure and the presence of individuals in the intertidal zones the place they feed.
And in the United States, adjustments in farming practices are making the shallow water wetlands that the godwits depend on rarer and fewer predictable — which means they spend extra time searching for a place to cease and feed.
“I think that is emblematic of lots of species, that most species can respond to one kind of change, but not a whole bunch of them all at the same time,” stated Senner.
“Climate change is taking a heavy toll on species that rely on a ‘geological clock’ for their survival; many are disappearing,” Rodrigo Agostinho, president of Brazil’s environmental company (Ibama), advised AFP.
These are a few of the points CMS events will deal with at their assembly in Brazil’s biodiversity-rich Pantanal, one among the world’s most necessary world conferences for wildlife conservation.
These nations are legally obliged to guard species listed as vulnerable to extinction, preserve and restore their habitats, forestall obstacles to migration and cooperate with different vary states.
Published – March 23, 2026 01:32 pm IST
