March 20, 2016
Godwit migration stop-off protected
Hauraki iwi Ngati Paoa is backing a plan that will preserve wetlands used by birds that migrate between Aotearoa and China.
The agreement between the Department of Conservation and China’s State Forestry Administration was signed on Friday at Pukorokoro-Miranda on the Firth of Thames, which is one of the wetlands that will be restored.
It also protects a seven kilometre stretch of coastal mudflat and salt ponds in Bohai Bay, Hebei Province, used by red knots, and a wetland in the Yalu Jian Nature Reserve near Dandong, Northern China, used by godwits.
Those wetlands have been threatened in recent years by increasing industrialisation.
Thousands of red knots and godwits have been feeding at Pukorokoro through the summer, and will leave soon to make the 12,000 kilometre migration to China and on to their breeding sites in Siberia and Alaska.
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