It was a glorious day on the Tasmanian wetlands. Golden plovers – an increasingly rare sight – lolled on the saltmarsh and the piping call of pied oystercatchers was carried on a salty breeze. The calm and tranquility was only briefly broken by a passing flash-winged little falcon, or hobby, causing consternation among a flock of tiny waders, red-necked stints, and putting them to flight.
On such a day, under an azure sky, you could forget there was a cloud on the horizon.
Our migratory waders – these remarkable shorebirds that traverse the globe on yearly migrations – are on a spiral to extinction.
The brutal facts of the collapse in their populations were presented at a forum organised by BirdLife Tasmania to coincide with the shorebirds’ summer sojourn here. The forum was followed up a few days later by a trip to the mudflats and saltmarsh of Orielton Lagoon, Sorell, to observe the waders.
The waders, as expected, were few and far between, especially compared with a half century ago when Tasmanian birders began monitoring their number. These vital data sets comprise the oldest records of shorebirds in the country and provide a grim picture of what has happened to them.
About 20 species of wader regularly spend their non-breeding season far away from their nesting habitat in the far north of the northern hemisphere and at least 10 of these have declined by up to 95 per cent in Tasmania in recent years. Declines are showing up more starkly in Tasmania because it is at the very end of the shorebirds’ migratory route, the South-East Asia Australasian Flyway, and traditionally fewer birds reach the extremities of their range.
When monitoring started in earnest in the early 1970s the wetlands of south-east Tasmania were awash with shorebirds. One species, the eastern curlew, flew in its thousands, although not in the number that blackened the skies over Sorell in the 1920s and 1930s, when curlews – the size of a crow and the largest of the waders – were shot for the pot during the great depression.
The statistics now show the numbers of eastern curlew have declined by 95 per cent, although they can still be seen in very small numbers. This is the not the case of the once common curlew sandpiper which is now listed as extinct in Tasmania.
The main cause of decline is the reclamation of the wetlands in South-East Asia which the waders use for refuelling stops on their long migrations. Development along Australian coastlines is also a factor.
The grim reality of wader decline was in focus when the birders gathered on the mudflats. The golden plovers viewed from Cemetery Point in Sorell proved a highlight, especially in the knowledge they have declined by 60 per cent. It was hard to believe these beautiful birds could vanish forever.