Aus Geo Award for Shorebird Monitoring Program

Prestigious award for BirdLife Australia program

At BirdLife Australia, we know how important our work is to conserve and protect Australia’s native birds and their habitats, whether it is through on-the-ground monitoring and interventions or strategic advocacy. And others agree: one of our key, long-running conservation programs has just won a prestigious Australian Geographic Society Award for Nature.

BirdLife Australia’s National Shorebird Monitoring Program is a shining example of the work we do: recruiting volunteer citizen scientists to conduct regular seasonal surveys to monitor the numbers of migratory shorebirds at strategic sites right around Australia. From this our scientists have determined the international population trends of a number of threatened species of shorebirds.

Recognising the importance of this vital program, it has been awarded a prestigious Australian Geographic Society Award for Nature.

The National Shorebird Monitoring Program has been running since the early 1980s, and in that time has recorded a substantial decline in several species of migratory shorebirds which spend our summer here – declines of up to 80 per cent in some cases – and this data was instrumental in BirdLife Australia’s advocacy to have a number of migratory shorebirds officially recognised as threatened species in recent years.

In all, the results of our monitoring surveys were key to a total of 13 different species* being classified as either Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable in Australia. This means that those species can, as a result, receive the full protections as provided by the EPBC Act, and has set into motion much-needed, on-ground conservation work as well as high-level advocacy.

The Australian Geographic Society Award for Nature is a fitting recognition of our ongoing conservation work.

*Curlew Sandpiper (Critically Endangered), Eastern Curlew (Critically Endangered), Lesser Sand Plover (Endangered), Bar-tailed Godwit (Endangered), Black-tailed Godwit (Endangered), Ruddy Turnstone (Vulnerable), Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (Vulnerable), Red Knot (Vulnerable), Great Knot (Vulnerable), Greater Sad Plover (Vulnerable), Asian Dowitcher (Vulnerable), Grey Plover (Vulnerable), Terek Sandpiper (Vulnerable).