The Central Asian Conservation Network (CACN), a regional platform of non-profits, researchers and conservation experts, has launched a Central Asian Flyway Digital Hub to pool knowledge on migratory birds along one of the world's main migration routes.
The Central Asian Flyway links breeding, stopover and wintering areas from northern Eurasia through Central and South Asia, and more than 600 bird species use it. "Conservation depends on people and organisations being able to share knowledge and act collaboratively across borders," said Taej Mundkur, science and policy adviser to CACN and senior adviser at Wetlands International.
Two portals are its practical core. A Bird Collision Reporting Portal lets people record birds killed or injured by power lines, wind turbines and other structures, since such records are scattered and hard to read at regional scale. A Ringing and Resighting Portal records birds carrying metal or colour rings, leg flags, neck bands and other marks; a bird marked in one country and seen thousands of kilometres away links parts of the route.
The hub also carries educational material for children, teachers and communities, including a story that follows a bar-headed goose on her first migration. With Bird Count India, CACN is developing Flyway Connect to share information on satellite-tagged birds between birdwatchers and researchers.
India is a key wintering ground on the flyway. "What happens to these birds in their non-breeding and stopover areas is closely connected to what happens elsewhere along their migration routes," said CACN science coordinator Ramesh Kumar Selvaraj. The platform was built with support from WWF Hong Kong and the Ornithological Society of the Middle East, and is at cafnetwork.org.
Photo: ANKITNARANG297 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Down To Earth
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