Bonn, 16 June 2011 - Both the BBC and the British newspaper, the Guardian, have reported on a conservation effort, co-sponsored by CMS, which is currently under way to help save the highly endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus). Experts fear that the species will go extinct within a decade unless drastic measures are taken.

Taking their common name from the distinctive shape of their bills, these waders have declined to possibly as few as 60 breeding pairs. They spend the summer in the Russian Arctic before migrating 8,000 kilometres to Myanmar and Bangladesh; they have also been sighted in Japan, Korea, China, Thailand and Viet Nam. Habitat loss and bycatch in nets set to trap other birds are thought to be the main reasons for the species’ decline.

An emergency mission by a coalition of organizations including the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Birds Russia, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the British Trust for Ornithology, BirdLife International, ArcCona, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force and Moscow Zoo aims to collect eggs from the wild and incubate them to create a captive population, which after a period of quarantine in Moscow will be housed at the WWT headquarters in Slimbridge in the UK

Read the BBC web article here and the Guardian article here