Surfbirds News: BirdLife International Archives
A recent study of Chinese Crested Tern highlights that the global population has fallen to less than fifty individuals, half what they were just three years ago.
The study believes that the main cause of this decline is an unregulated expansion in trade for seabird eggs, a local delicacy that has risen in demand alongside a thriving tourist economy.
Without urgent action conservationists have given the bird less than five years before disappearing completely from its two remaining breeding areas.
Chinese Crested Tern ?? Bjorn Anderson
Chinese Crested Tern
Sterna bernstein
is China’s rarest bird, listed by BirdLife International as Critically Endangered ??? the most severe threat category.
First discovered in 1861 and rarely recorded since, Chinese Crested Tern was largely presumed extinct until 2000, when four adults and four chicks were found amongst a colony of other tern species on Matsu, an island off the coast of Fujian Province. In 2004, it was discovered breeding at another site: Jiushan Islands, on the coast of Zhejiang Province of eastern China. At present these are the only known breeding sites in the world. |
