Surveys at Bagan Percut, Sumatra, reveal its international importance to migratory shorebirds and breeding herons

The Bagan Percut region of north-eastern Sumatra, Indonesia, is becoming well known for its large concentrations of migratory shorebirds. From January to June 2011 we made monthly counts of shorebirds and waterbirds at four mudflats and one heron rookery. Fifty-one species were recorded, including 35 migratory species, and eight breeding species in the rookery. We counted 20,114 migratory shorebirds (mudflats) and 45,648 breeding waterbirds (rookery) over six months of surveys. We observed >1% of the East Asian-Australasian flyway population of five species of migratory shorebirds: Nordmann’s Greenshank Tringa guttifer (globally Endangered), Lesser Sand Plover Charadrius mongolus, Pacific Golden Plover Pluvialis fulva, Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata, and Ruddy Turnstone Arenaria interpres. Our results support the work of others that indicate that Bagan Percut is an important habitat for wintering, migrating, and summering shorebirds. We recommend that Bagan Percut be added to the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership list of internationally important wetlands because the area meets all three criteria for inclusion

PENDIDIKAN LINGKUNGAN DI SDN 16 SEUNUDDON KABUPATEN ACEH UTARA DALAM RANGKA KONSERVASI BURUNG MIGRAN

Seunuddon, salah satu distrik di Kabupaten Aceh Utara, menjadi salah satu kecamatan yang menjadi titik singgah burung migran. Sebanyak 32 spesies burung migran yang berasal dari beberapa negara teridentifikasi berada di kecamatan tersebut. Akan tetapi, karena kurangnya pemahaman dan edukasi terhadap burung migran, masyarakat lokal mengganggap keberadaan burung migran bukan sesuatu yang istimewa. Hilangnya nilai budaya konservasi dalam masyarakat Aceh mengakibatkan sulitnya upaya untuk melindungi kehadiran burung migran. Rendahnya pemahaman inilah yang menjadi latar belakang perlunya pemahaman nilai konservasi pada SDN 16 Seunuddon, Kabupaten Aceh Utara. Metode kegiatan ini adalah learning by game berupa kegiatan pemaparan materi tentang konservasi dengan menggunakan bahasa Aceh, tanya jawab, kuis interaktif dan lomba mewarnai pada siswa kelas 5 Sekolah Dasar SDN 16 Seunuddon. Dari hasil kegiatan didapatkan peningkatan pemahaman siswa mengenai burung migran dan konservasi wilayah pesisir. Berdasarkan hasil wawancara anak-anak lebih paham dengan menggunakan bahasa Aceh karena merupakan bahasa sehari-hari. Terdapat kenaikan yang cukup signifikan dari hasil kuis yang telah dilakukan yaitu nilai rata-rata pre-test yaitu 49,2 dan mengalami kenaikan pada nilai post-test sebesar 84,6. Untuk pemahaman siswa melalui tebak gambar, siswa mampu menjawab nama burung migran dari gambar yang disajikan. Sementara itu, untuk lomba mewarnai, 25 siswa mampu mewarnai gambar dengan objek burung migran dengan kategori baik dan 10 dengan kategori sangat baik

Using market data and expert opinion to identify overexploited species in the wild bird trade

a b s t r a c t The wildlife trade involves thousands of vertebrate species and now rivals habitat loss as an extinction driver in some regions. However, its impacts are poorly known because field monitoring of wild populations is expensive, localized, and requires specialized expertise. We examined whether market data and expert opinion could be used to identify bird species that may be at risk from the trade in Indonesia. We asked expert ornithologists to characterize population trends of 38 species of Indonesian birds, including many heavily traded species. They identified 14 species as having undergone population declines, all of which are regularly traded, and only two of which are restricted to old-growth forests. Conversely, none of the untraded species was classified as declining. We combined the expert-derived population trends with data on changes in price and trade volume from Indonesian wildlife markets to see if market data could identify declining species. We found that severely declining species have a significantly different price-volume signal than stable/increasing species; the former are characterized by increasing market prices and declining volumes. Market data are much cheaper to collect than field data, roughly 1/30th the cost of a representative field study. We recommend a two-step approach to assess trade impacts on wild birds in Southeast Asia: coordinated market monitoring followed by field studies of species whose market signals indicate declining populations. Our findings, however, require further validation with higher resolution wild population and market data