New Zealand Embassy in Beijing hosts “Friends of the Flyway”

On Thursday 15 August 2024, to celebrate National Ecology Day, the New Zealand Ambassador in Beijing, Grahame Morton, hosted a ‘friends of the flyway’ event to celebrate the migratory shorebirds that connect New Zealand with Siberia and Alaska via China’s Yellow Sea.

Just last month, Yalu Jiang Estuary in Liaoning Province was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in recognition of its importance to migratory shorebirds, and the Deputy Mayor of Dandong, the city that administers these vital inter-tidal mudflats, participated in the NZ Embassy’s event alongside senior government officials from China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, senior diplomats from flyway countries and the Ambassadors for Nature initiative and international organisations such as the UN and Asian Development Bank.

It was an opportunity to celebrate the biodiversity that connects communities, cities, countries and even continents. The story of one particular shorebird – the Bar-tailed Godwit 斑尾塍鹬 Bān wěi chéng yù (Limosa lapponica baueri) is hard to comprehend. Each spring these birds, known as the “kuaka” by Maoris, set off from non-breeding grounds in New Zealand and head to China’s Yellow Sea, where they take a break and feed up on the rich inter-tidal mudflats, before the second part of their journey from China to Alaska to breed.

Incredibly, after breeding, these birds make a non-stop c11,000km flight from Alaska direct to New Zealand. Scientists used to think it was impossible for a bird of its size to make such a non-stop journey and when satellite tracking proved that was the case, they were baffled. Studies in Alaska revealed something remarkable. Before setting off, these birds are effectively an eating machine. They double their bodyweight to put on fat, the fuel for their journey. But even more remarkable is that, just before leaving, they shrink their digestive organs as they won’t need them for 7 days and 7 nights (excess weight) and their heart and pectoral muscles almost double in size to power their flight. They literally transform themselves from an eating machine to a flying machine. Then, on arrival after their 11,000km journey, they regenerate their digestive organs, their heart and pectoral muscles shrink back to normal size, transforming themselves back to an eating machine.

Migratory shorebirds are not only incredible athletes; they inspire us, they fill us with awe and connect people and places. Protecting them requires coordinated action on the breeding grounds, non-breeding grounds and all the places they need along the way. That is why, in the context of the global biodiversity crisis, the New Zealand Embassy should be congratulated for elevating biodiversity and, in particular migratory birds, as a pillar of their bilateral and multilateral relationships. 

There are long-standing bilateral agreements between New Zealand and China on migratory shorebirds and, on Thursday evening, there was some discussion about the potential to build on that work to begin formal trilateral cooperation between New Zealand (non-breeding grounds), China (stopover sites) and the United States (breeding grounds) based on the Bar-tailed Godwit migration.  Such cooperation could promote joint scientific projects through academic institutions, building international co-stewardship programs (e.g. including partnering with existing ranger programs), connecting schools and twinning towns and cities in the three countries. 

More broadly, trialteral cooperation could support multiple objectives, including:

• Demonstrating how international cooperation is vital to manage the risks of global
  biodiversity loss and to implement the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
• Building bridges between countries, communities and local people across continents
  that create the foundation for scientific, cultural and political cooperation
• Setting a leadership example for other countries to follow
• Elevating biodiversity and bio-cultural conservation to the level of leaders and attracting international media coverage

Congratulations to the New Zealand Ambassador for the successful event and, let’s hope the seeds of trilateral cooperation sowed at the event will flourish into groundbreaking NZ-China-US cooperation!

All photos courtesy of the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing.