Towra Point Ramsar preservation

Yeah, so just to introduce myself, my name is Liz Bulley and I'm a Senior Land Services Officer for Greater Sydney Local Land Services.

As part of the National Landcare Program and the Towra Point funding that we get from the Federal Government, we've been able to bring you these free webinars and we've managed to get a real expert in this area, which is Phil Straw.

You might be able to see him on the screen there and he's going to be presenting today on the East Asian Australasian flyway.

If you haven't heard of that, you're about to learn and go into a great deep dive on it. It’s really fascinating. I’ve looked through the presentation and I think you’re all going to really enjoy it.

But what I’ll do first is a very quick Welcome to Country. I’ll begin today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. And, because of the nature of webinars, everybody’s meeting on different parts of Country, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present.

You’re quite welcome to put in the chat whereabouts you’re logging in from today, because that’s always really interesting to see how far and wide the audience is coming from.

As I said, we’re having the first of two webinars. I’ll talk a bit about the second one again at the end.

Has anyone missed my little blurb on it? I’ll just do a very brief biography covering Phil’s experience. He sent me some information — it’s all very impressive and I felt bad having to cull it down to something I could read in a couple of minutes because there’s quite a lot of information there.

Phil’s involvement with wetland management and migratory birds started in 1960 where he worked for Doctor Luke Hoffman, who’s pretty much seen as the founding father of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. That was in the Camargue in the South of France.

He was also involved in the MAR conference in 1962, which called for an international convention on wetlands following concern about how rapidly large areas of wetlands in Europe were being impacted. This led to the birth of Ramsar.

Phil left France to work at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology in Oxford and then travelled to Australia where he worked for the Department of Zoology at Queensland University for five years, then the Research Department of New South Wales Fisheries, followed by the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service.

In 1992 he formed his own company working in the design, construction and management of wetlands both in Australia and in Asia.

In 1996 he convened a symposium which led to the launch of the East Asian Australasian Shorebird Reserve Network and subsequently eight countries recognised 19 wetland sites that were critical to the survival of migratory species.

Phil is the Australasian Wader Study Group's East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership Liaison Officer and is now working with the CEPA Working Group of the EAAFP, including the subject of this presentation today.

So I think you can see we’ve got good pedigree here to be passing on information about this topic.

Without any further delay, I’d like to pass over to Phil Straw and get him to go through this series of slides. I’ll be helping Phil by going through them myself. Over to you, Phil.

Phil:
Thanks, Liz. Great to be here talking about my favourite subject.

We’re talking about shorebirds. Of the shorebirds in Australia, 18 are resident species, which we won’t talk about today, and 36 are migrants.

You can see pictures of the bar-tailed godwit and other shorebirds — probably a broad-billed sandpiper at the top left, a red-necked stint in the middle, and a red knot at the top right.

Then you’ve got eastern curlew and, in the middle, the plovers. That’s one bird that comes here during our winter, not during our summer — that’s the double-banded plover from New Zealand.

The Latham’s snipe is on the right middle and then the pratincole, which is a bit of an oddball one. It goes to wetlands and often goes out onto the tidal flats in north-west Australia and has been counted up to nearly 2.1 million birds in one season — though it’s very erratic. And then the bar-tailed godwits again at the bottom.

The shorebirds, unlike songbirds, feed differently. They may feed day and night according to the tide. Low tide increases the area of feeding and the behaviour of prey, and that’s when they feed most, whether it’s day or night.

Smaller birds tend to need to feed a bit longer because they don’t eat large amounts, and at high tide birds roost at various sites. During the day you’ll see them on sandspits and beaches, but at night they shift across to flooded saltmarsh or shallow water so they can see predators approaching.

Most migratory shorebirds spend much of their lives on intertidal mudflats — a globally declining resource. They’re with us for about six or seven months of the year feeding on mudflats in Australia, then move on migration to their breeding grounds.

They eat polychaete worms, bivalves and little crustaceans like amphipods. With the bivalves, the red knot typically swallows one whole. In a quiet environment, like in lab experiments, you can hear a crunch after about 30 seconds as the gut crushes the shell before digesting the food.

Now, the bar-tailed godwit is very adaptable in its use of estuarine and coastal feeding habitats in and around Australia, taking prey from firm sandy flats as well as deep soft mud. The birds detect prey with the sensitive tips of their bills — they’re not using their eyes under the mud but locating prey by touch.

Here’s one that has eaten a fat load. We measure fat on a scale of one to five — this is five. That means it’s ready to go. To make a non-stop flight of a week or more, a bird has to put on enough fat to act as fuel to carry it at altitudes of 3,000 to 5,000 metres in varying weather conditions, plus some fat in reserve.

These are flying machines — almost like jet fighters in shape. The fat from the neck down to the base of the tail indicates they’re ready to commence their first 10,000 kilometre flight from Sydney or wherever they’re leaving from to the Yellow Sea, between Korea and China.

Pre-migration, birds fatten up with a 55 to 85 percent increase in weight. If you put on that much weight, you’d find it hard to walk — but this fuels their flight. They don’t normally go that fat because they need to be agile and avoid predators, but once they’re up migrating, they’re above falcons and can just take off and fly.

They also build up flight muscles to carry the load. The blood thickens, the heart enlarges to supply oxygen to more muscles, and the stomach, intestines, liver and kidneys all decrease in size — they’re not feeding for a week or so.

Before they leave, they completely moult into breeding plumage — only the fittest individuals complete this before departure, ensuring greater breeding success.

During flight, they decrease in weight due to energy consumption, using up to a gram of fat per hour. Flight muscles atrophy as weight decreases, heart muscles shrink, and brain chemistry changes to allow non-stop flight for days. Evidence suggests they may rest sections of their brain independently while flying.

From Australia — from Sydney or wherever — they fly directly to the Yellow Sea between Korea and China. This is the first stage of the Sydney to Alaska flight via the north end of the Yellow Sea — a non-stop flight of 10,000 kilometres taking up to eight days.

They’ve used a lot of energy on that trip. The brown lines on tracking maps show the godwits’ path along the north coast, while Terek sandpipers and eastern curlews don’t go quite as far. The return trip shows up too.

This data is a bit out of date now — we’ve got records of over 11,000 kilometres in one flight, with the last one reaching about 13,000 kilometres. That’s about the limit, we think. So from Alaska to Australia and New Zealand return trip is 34,000 kilometres approximately. Bar-tailed godwits 310 grammes non migratory weight. That's without the fat load and 11,000 kilometres or a lot more.

The flight south for a young bird is quite a feat.

Next one Liz. OK, on the northward migration shorebirds flying the East Asian-Australasian Flyway will stop off for five to six weeks in the Yellow Sea region of China or Korea to refuel and prepare for the breeding grounds. Now they've used up nearly all of their fat getting from Sydney to the Yellow Sea.

As you can see, the tidal flats here are huge. It goes off into the horizon. Very productive feeding areas, and the five or six weeks then is to put a full load on again because their next flight is going to be to Alaska to the breeding grounds.

Next slide. Well, OK, well, where there is very little food available for the adults when they get there.

Now, although the tidal flats are extensive, there are threats to shorebirds in China, including fishing nets. Fortunately, a lot of fishing nets are fairly easy to see, but we have to watch fishermen these days because they don't like shorebirds competing with them and some of them use the very fine — it's almost like mist nets. So we have to tighten up the laws relating to fishermen in China because we deal with them being caught up in a fishing net, fishing nets like a mist net, and they’re killed during the process.

The little odd structure in the middle of the screen there is a dwelling that goes up and down with the tide, a little raft with a little house on it. And that's where fishermen spend their time between tides during the day rather than going home and back again, which is quite a slog across such big mud flats as nasty as that. But you see the nets go as far as you can see.

Next slide. Now the other ones, these are people who are collecting shellfish as often do in Sydney and or in Australia, many places for food and provided these people are just collecting using their little dredge dredges and pick them up, the harvesting is pretty sustainable. It's just that some people tend to do these days use little pumps and that to speed things up and that is not so sustainable. So there's obviously competition for the shrinking resource there.

Next slide. And the third threat to shorebirds generally on the coast of China and Korea is industrial pollution. And I'll touch on that a bit later on because it's not doing the feeding habitat much good nor the food that they eat.

Next slide. OK, land reformation for fish ponds is one of the threats in a way, fish ponds or rice fields and eventually development. You can see that the habitat is quite extensive there, but they've been reclaimed. If it's fish ponds, there is often a reasonable amount of food for the birds feeding in the fish ponds and it can feed in the ponds and roost on the banks. So fish ponds are not too bad at all. Not so much rice paddies or birds who feed in rice paddies during the flood period.

Next slide. OK, top right hand. You can see the extent of those tidal floods you saw before, just the fish ponds and the other types of marine harvesting. This could be salt pans and things like that as well.

And research has been carried out. This is a young lady from Beijing Normal University helping out with the surveys up there. These are essential, but can we make a difference, that’s the thing.

OK, next slide. OK, now one of the biggest threats in China and Korea as well as Australia is land reclamation. You'll hear. I won't go into those details in Australia. It takes us too long and but obviously this is going to be a loss of feeding area and this is how the sites are reclaimed on the previous slides.

Next slide. OK, this is one of the biggest disasters for shorebirds, a place called Saemangeum. You'll see the sea wall which goes about 33 kilometres closing off what was on the right hand side tidal flats. You can still see the faint areas of the shoals and they originally wanted to drain this for agriculture. But as you see by the small image there that was actually used for development and those areas have been built on.

And so the whole area has been lost as feeding area, so the biggest loss of feeding habitat of any one site in the whole flyway of the world. So you've got a little bit of tidal flats, but they will eventually be taken up as well. So that's huge barrages there to keep the water from those rivers coming from the right flowing straight out into the sea. And well, they then reclaim as the little image shows there.

Next one, Liz. Now this is an interesting shot. These are pictures of a couple of hunters, a father and son team, and this is how they would normally catch shorebirds for the market. The birds have to be caught in a good condition. You see the guys are extracting it from what we call a clap net.

And you'll see the birds apparently near them, near the bird, the guy standing in the water, but they're not. They're actually decoys and they have these decoys and then they have a clap net folded up on the mud. And as the birds come down to investigate, they pull a string and the clap net whizzes over the top of them.

And then they catch the birds and extract them from the net as he is doing there. Now you see now next to him, he's got a nice big basket which he puts the shorebirds in those, they can't fly out, but they can move around so they’re quite unharmed.

And then the top corner there, they're walking back to shore. In our case they were moving across to the banding station because these guys were also used by the Fudan University in Shanghai for catching birds, for banding, because these are the experts. They catch a lot more birds than we can with cannon nets.

And the other good thing is they come across with baskets full at a time, not, you know, huge net full of a time. And we're banding at the rate which they're bringing them in. And the bottom you can see there where that's the banding station where we're actually banding the birds. And some of those colour-marked birds we’ll often now see in Australia as they come across. So these are the good guys, and their expertise enables us to do this sort of work. These guys have been helping us out. Initially, they asked how much we’re going to pay per kilo, and we said, “No, we want to pay by birds because we’re banding them.” Anyway, we didn’t pay them a lot of money, but it was very handy having them do this, so it helped our research a lot.

Next slide. Right — now, when we’re doing surveys of tidal flats, these are some of the bands between different fish ponds and things. It’s a very narrow stretch. We used to hire a little van with a local driver, and this is one of the guys from Beijing watching that he doesn’t drive up the edge. We covered huge areas like this, which is quite painstaking and a bit of a challenge, but anyway.

Next one. Now, this is a place called Yalu Jiang, which is a big nature reserve. Now, it didn’t look like a nature reserve, but you can class fish ponds as nature reserves as well. These are roosts of birds — you see the mass of birds on that lower band wall, a little fence along the edge of it there — that’s thousands and thousands of birds that can roost on those walls, feed in the ponds, or fly between those banks and intertidal shores. This provides an excellent stopover site for migratory shorebirds, so it’s one benefit of these sites.

Next one, Liz. OK — now the birds have fattened up after their time in the Yellow Sea, up to their full capacity, because these birds are now flying across to Alaska. Once they arrive there — these are the adults — they don’t really have any food there. The whole idea is for laying eggs at the right time of year for the chicks to rear, so they’ve got to arrive, the females, to lay eggs. That’s why they need to be really fat before they leave, because they use most of their fat reserves up in laying eggs and the males establishing territories and suchlike.

Next slide. And this is the tundra in Alaska. It’s a big, sort of wet, boggy area with lots of pools and suchlike for the birds to feed. You’ll see by the next slide — next slide, Liz — this tundra is a very boggy area, and that’s as high as the vegetation grows there. And that’s including the little trees and grasses and suchlike. The birds can feed to some extent in the lagoons there, but as we go on to the next slide, there’s a few little berries and that — not many shorebirds eat the berries. Some species do, but at that time that’s about all there is on the tidal flats there.

Next slide. This is a godwit on the breeding grounds — a male. He’s pretty well camouflaged. Also, the tundra is pretty flat, so they can see any approach of predators, which is what they feel happy with. They can sit down, camouflage themselves, and watch out for predators that might attack — which I’ll show you in a short while.

Next slide. And this is the female nestled down into the tundra. Near her beak there, that’s a willow tree — about the height that willow trees grow in Alaska — and other little shrubs and things growing around her, and she fits in quite well there.

Next slide. Now this is what it’s all about. This is a friend of mine, Elena Lappo — Dr. Lappo. She works for the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. The timing of the hatchlings of the chicks coincides with the hatching of billions of insects during the short but 24-hour daylight summer.

Now, the chicks are not fed by the adults. Even if you see a masked lapwing walking in your park, you’ll see the chicks are not being fed — they go around feeding themselves, picking on the ground. So these birds have to be able to feed themselves, and they come out and they’ve got these insects coming out of the vegetation there. All they do is just walk around and eat during their time there until they reach full size and are able to fly — by which time the females have already left because they’ve used most of their reserves up, and the males are left to look after the chicks.

Next slide. One of the big issues there is predators — the Arctic fox. This is not a shorebird egg, it’s a goose egg, but predation is one thing they have to watch out for, as birds do anywhere in the world, I suppose. The adults are the ones that draw predators away from the chicks and help protect them that way.

The next slide shows another predator — the long-tailed skua. They also will take chicks and eggs, small chicks and eggs. They’re quite plentiful as well, but they also get snowy owls and a few other birds of prey up there too.

OK, next slide, Liz. Now, you’ve already heard about lemmings, and we have lemming years — sort of myths about them running off cliffs and things like that — but anyway, in a good lemming year, the predation pressure on shorebirds is much lower, resulting in a higher survival rate. So it’s a good shorebird year when you’ve got a good lemming year.

OK, next slide. So, as I said, the females at this stage have already gone back. The males now move down to the intertidal flats of Alaska, where the young birds switch from feeding in the tundra habitat to the habitat they’ll be using for the rest of their lives — intertidal mudflats. That’s a different type of food, and here they must fatten up. The mudflats there are very productive, and the males will leave shortly after this as soon as they’ve got enough fat on, leaving the young to fatten up themselves.

Eventually, the young — deserted by the adults — will follow on and start flying across the world’s biggest ocean, the Pacific Ocean, to an unknown destination. There’s an instinct that’s built into all migratory birds — a direction to fly, but not knowing where they’re going.

Next slide. This is the distance they fly. Young birds haven’t flown there before — the adults have already gone — and this is 11,000 or up to 13,000 kilometres per flight. We know in nine days — nine days without stops on the way. You’re flapping your wings continuously for that period of time, and the birds don’t know it, but eventually they will hit land if they keep flying far enough.

The adults, once they get there, already know from the landscape where they’re going and they always go back to the beach they used in previous years. The young birds don’t know — they’ll just land on the coast and match up with any other shorebirds feeding on the intertidal mudflats until it’s time for their return migration.

Next slide. And that flight is about the limits of endurance of shorebirds. The young birds obviously suffer more than adults. The three birds in the front — the one with his wings up and the one behind it — are young birds. You can see one struggling to stand up, the tide just coming in a little bit there, and it’s getting a bit wet, so it’s trying to stand up there. You can see it’s actually at the limits of endurance because once they land, they have to switch back to feeding mode after that migration and start feeding as soon as they can.

They only need enough body weight to fly around because they won’t need to put on a fat load until they return. But the survival of the birds is high — having completed these big journeys over their lifespan, which can be 20 to 30 years. Adults travel back and forth all that time, covering huge distances during their lives just through migration.

At the end of each migration, most birds have depleted all of their reserves. Juveniles, as I said before, find it very, very hard and some of them, of course, don’t make it.

Next slide. Right, now — is it safe back in Australia when they get back? Well, not really. Loss of habitat and disturbance are serious threats to shorebirds in Australia. If shorebirds cannot put on enough fat for the journey at the end of their time in Australia, when they fly back to the breeding grounds — the fact they don’t, means there’s no migration, therefore no recruitment, so populations may decline if it gets too bad.

Birds are often disturbed at feeding areas, chased by dogs, kept away from feeding and roost sites by jet skis, kite surfing, etc. Sites of international importance for migratory shorebirds around Australia are the responsibility of state conservation agencies. In many other countries, the NGOs are quite big and often manage the sites, but in Australia, it’s just the governments.

The site managers of about 200 sites in Australia may know little about migratory shorebirds. As part of working groups I’m in with colleagues across the flyway, we’re establishing a Waterbird Site Manager Network — training people up, providing materials, and trying to improve site management in Australia. That’s not just in Australia but throughout the flyway, because a lot of the birds go to other countries between the Arctic and Australia.

In Australia, the biggest challenge will also be to run the site managers training program, which I just mentioned.

Next one. OK, we don’t see so much drastic and obvious dumping of rubbish on wetlands these days — people realise they’re not wastelands. But just down below you see a fisherman quite innocently nesting off a beach or a sandspit, not knowing that at high tide it’s an important roost site — until it’s explained to him, and then he might move on.

But the other one is dogs. Dogs chase birds. People say, “Oh well, they’re only chasing seagulls, they’re not doing any real damage.” But every time the dog chases the birds, they’re using up reserves — the fat they might be putting on for migration — and this may affect their ability to migrate.

We have to make people aware of all these disturbances, and it happens in a lot of places. Local councils don’t always stop people from letting dogs run off leash, and that’s one big issue we’re fighting at the moment.

Next slide. OK, this is Botany Bay. In 1942, the north side of Botany Bay was an incredible place for shorebirds. The early ornithologists did a lot of work there counting thousands of migratory shorebirds — that was the main area. The south side, not so much, but you’ll see that now the south side is all that’s left.

Although wetlands were reclaimed for Sydney Airport, tidal flats still stretch across much of the northern shores of the bay. Several thousand shorebirds still count there. You can just see where the Cooks River snakes through — a faint cross where the airport was in 1942 — nothing compared to what we get these days.

The next slide shows a line across what we were just looking at. Since then, we have Port Botany in the top right, the extension of the airport, the Cooks River that came out at the top there — two dark lines coming down to where the old river used to come out. It’s been diverted and now comes out on the left, retained by rock walls and suchlike. So it doesn’t provide an estuary at all.

The main runway — the short one — was in the 1960s, and in 1992 they started developing the parallel runway, which is the long figure there. So it’s lost practically all the wetlands on the northern shores. Some species have all but disappeared from that area.

Next slide. OK, this gives you a quick vision of what we’ve gone through and the flight pattern of E7 — a very famous female godwit who had a satellite tracker and followed that whole route from Australia to China to Alaska and back down again to New Zealand. That one was about 13,500 kilometres in 11 days from Alaska — a record.

Next slide. OK, we’re getting towards the end now. There’s some good news — this is the world’s largest World Heritage Site. It happens to be the tidal flats in China and Korea I was showing you before.

When Xi Jinping, the current president of China, came into power, he realised that a lot of illegal coastal development was taking place and he drew a red line down the coast and said any development not approved or built on will be confiscated and the sites protected. There’s a huge area of tidal flats — the biggest in the world — so it’s a very important area called the Yellow Sea, vital for migratory shorebirds.

Until this period, they were being lost at a high rate, as you saw from the previous slides.

Next slide. And this is the celebration of the declaration of the World Heritage Site at Bohai Bay — one of the most important places for migratory shorebirds in the world.

I think that might be the end. Let’s have a look. Next slide. Yeah. All right — well, that’s the story in a nutshell.

So Liz, are you getting any questions or do you want to take questions?
Yeah, I’m just having a little look. Has anyone put any? I’m just wondering if there are some questions we did down. Anyone has any anything from — I want to know a little bit more information on something that you want expanded on.

I’m hoping a couple of questions do come up there, but yeah, I find that amazing — that you can go 13,500 kilometres in 11 days. That’s just, you know, I do a four-hour drive and I’m exhausted and it’s the car doing all the work — but I just find it incredible these birds can travel like they do.

Now this is not stopping — you can’t glide. You’re not gliding like a lot of birds do — you’re actually flapping the wings for that length of time. So it’s a bit of an endurance, to say the least.

So I’m assuming they’re sleeping — I’ve heard some people say that when birds are migrating, they’re sleeping on the wing. Are these birds doing that?
Well, they reckon that they can rest certain parts of the brain — probably that’s in the text you’ve picked up. So in a way they’re resting their brain as they’re migrating over that period of time. But yeah, a lot more research has to be done on migration, how they navigate and everything else.

I mean, a young bird that flies across the Pacific — something it’s never done before — just keeps flying and flying and flying until it hits land at the other end, which of course it’s completely unaware of. The adults have been doing it for a long time, of course.
Yeah, it’s amazing they know which direction to fly in when they’ve never done it before — I find that amazing as well.

Phil's involvement with wetland management and the study of migratory birds.

That started in 1960 when he worked under Doctor Luke Hoffman, who is pretty much considered the father of the Ramsar Convention on the wetlands and that was in the Camargue in the South of France.

He was involved in the MAR conference in 1962 which called for an International Convention on wetlands following concern that with the rapidity with which large areas of wetlands in Europe were being impacted.

So this led to the birth of Ramsar.

Phil left France to work at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology in Oxford and then he soon travelled to Australia where he worked for the Department of Zoology at Queensland University for five years, then the Research Department of New South Wales Fisheries, followed by the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service.

So he's had a very varied background, lots of, lots of interesting places to work there.

In 1992 he formed his own company, so he's worked in the design, construction and management of wetlands with that company in both Australia and also in Asia.

In 1996, he convened a symposium which led to the launch of the East Asian Australasian Shorebird Reserve Network and subsequently 8 countries recognising 19 wetlands sites that were critical to the survival of these migratory species.

Phil is the Australasian Water Studies Group's East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership Liaison Officer.

That's a mouthful, and is now working with the CEPA working group of the EAAFP.

So without any further delay, I'd like to welcome Phil to this webinar and hope that you take away many learnings from this event.

So thank you.

All right, thanks.

Well, this is the image of the Ramsar site and also the aquatic reserve, which is all important and this is the location and just give you a large view of that.

But perhaps can go on to the next one, Liz.

OK, this is a part of a report I did for the Local Land Services some time ago and it's showing all the roost sites in Botany Bay at that time in 1984.

But it's somewhat different from that now, the Towra Spit image, which you can see there.

There's now, there's change, an island and lots of other things have happened in the meantime.

So there's been a lot of changes.

So we've found that - just go to the next one.

Yeah.

And that's the situation now actually. I'll go on.

This is Botany Bay at the moment - doesn't show up the lesser number of sites there, but, but I wasn't able to update this before.

So we'll just go on because I've got some interesting pictures to, to follow through.

So, next one. Now, this is the Elephant's Trunk, as it was called at that stage.

It was where the, the most important roosting site for the migratory shorebirds.

It was a nesting site for little terns.
And, and this was in 1984, just at the time when it was going to be listed as a Ramsar site just coincidentally.

And we tried to get this, this part stabilised as it broke off.

You'll see what happens next when they go along.

And we got a contract from Federal Airports Corporation to, to do this.

But the EIS for this which is what went through the ports.

So the Maritime Services Board, yeah, it was unsuccessful and we weren't able to do a compromise on that.

So that failed in that respect.

But anyway, we'll see what's happening next.

So next slide. This was predicted to happen

That Towra Spit was going to break away as an island and that was reported by the Australian Littoral Society in 1973 in a report to the Commonwealth government.

So we tried to stop it from doing that and as predicted,

it's moving in a westerly direction.

It's been moving at 20 metres a year and this is in 2001.

You can see how far it's moved from where it was.

The red writing there, which is still the Elephant's Trunk or Towra Spit and you can see Carters Shoals to the left down there.

And that's where we predicted it was going to go.

I thought it would either go on and merge with the Carters Shoals or it would disintegrate or it would continue on towards the mouth of the Cooks River.

The next one shows us the next progress from that and you see it's already moved as we've predicted. It's now headed down to Carters Shoals,

which is just below the island now.

It's a long skinny thing now with a bit of vegetation in the middle of the sort of boomerang shape.

So it's been a huge change over that time and it's merging with Carters Shoals and becoming elongate.

But we're fortunate that it's moved that far and but you'll see by the next slide

where it's actually that's where it is now five years later and it's still part of the Carters Shoals.

The islands are still attracting quite a few migratory shorebirds and everything else,

but we've got to look at to see how we can stabilise that without compromising the whole thing because it's all to do with hydraulics and everything else.

But it's been stuck there for five years and it's still working.

And that's our major site.

OK, just go on to the next one.

And we did look before at all those.

So there's three sites, there's three species that were part of this project and these were three sites where as you'll see later on was

presented as part of the Ramsar notification of the concerns in Botany Bay.

And the pied oystercatcher and the eastern curlew and the little tern were 3 species that were listed particularly at that stage.

Just going to the next one, the pied oystercatcher,

as you see from the graphs as you go along, has actually been,

it's been quite incredible.

It's not all that many pairs that nest in Botany Bay.

But this was a study, another study I was involved with which

compares with the Hunter Estuary, which is HE, and the blue lines of the background and the pied oystercatcher's actually been increasing.

You see in 2002, there's less than 40 birds at Towra Point.

And you can see this is now going up and it's fluctuating around 100 or 100 plus now since this one 2016, we have at least 100 and perhaps sometimes a bit more in the Bay.

So we can't really explain that because it can't be,

we don't think it's just from the recruitment from the birds to the nesting in Botany Bay.

So whether we've got a recruitment from elsewhere or not.

But anyway, it's a good outcome because it's one of the main species that we wanted to improve the situation for them as part of the offsets for the concern of the loss of birds in Botany Bay.

And the next one is, and you'll see this is right up to date how they fluctuate over the time for different years.

But if you average out, we have gone over to over the 100 mark now and that's what we've still got.

So in 1972, I think it was 1 pair in Botany Bay and we've come a long way since that.

So we can't explain all of that, but it's at least been successful.

It's probably a lot to do with the fox baiting done by Parks and Wildlife.
Service to protect their eggs and such like and young.

So, so that's, that's a good news story from that particular species' point of view.

And the next one is the eastern curlew.

Eastern curlew is globally now listed as critically endangered and it was one of a species of particular concern.

We were very concerned about what was going to happen in Botany Bay at Towra Point Ramsar site in particular. OK the next one on from that.

I think we've got some shots on this one.

And this is also, if you look at the red line,

which is Botany Bay, the population, as you'll see later on was about 250 birds in the Bay.

And over the years it's declined, but it's,

it's settled down again at a hundred birds.

And that's been like that now for 20-odd years.

So that's sort of a good thing.

And provided we can retain that roosting island, which I pointed out,

we've got a fair bit of work to do there.

But I explained that well, there's, there's some issues there.

That's again comparing with the Hunter Estuary,

which is the most important site for migratory shorebirds in NSW.

So we're doing well there, because they are losing,

because of various changes in the morphology and everything else of the Hunter Estuary.

But that's another species that we've been able to hold.

And the left graph there gives you a clearer view of fairly constant line of accounts. Next one.

And that's just again, just a simple event right up to date to 2023.

But we haven't got the last count for there.

But you'll see that the, and the dips in between,

of course is when the birds are not here, they migrate as you would have seen on the last presentation.

They fly up to the Arctic and are there for four months of the year and for six or seven months of the year.

They're with us because they're here for the non-breeding season,

which is very short.

It's only about four months in the Arctic with about six or seven months with us.

So that's still a pretty good outcome for what's happened so far.

And we've just got to try to maintain this, but I'll go into that a bit later.

So the next slide, Liz. Now little tern is somewhat different.

It's a nesting bird.

It comes down from Japan and other parts of the,

it doesn't go right up like a lot of migratory shorebirds go up to the high Arctic.

This one is lower down and some as another population actually breeds where these birds come from and they come down here as non-breeding birds.

So we get a bit of a mixture, but, together in the same flock sometimes and it's a bit confusing to many people.

But we've had a, a problem where the the where the island originated from Towra Spit, the Elephant's Trunk at Towra Spit,

rather sorry, but that's changed.

We've got a fair bit of disturbance there.

We've got a very small nesting area.

And in the last couple of years or so, they've not been nesting on Spit Island.

They were doing that, but because of the shape and change of the shape and the size of it, their area's reduced.

So we're not getting particularly large numbers of little terns.

So that's one species of concern that we can still work on.

I've got some proposals which you'll see a bit later on in this presentation about providing somewhere for them to nest as well.

So we'll go on.

And that's just, you see some very big peaks and when they first arrive, if they're going to be successful, if the,

the bigger the flocks that come in to nest,

the better chance they have because the more birds there are to protect them from predators such as silver gulls and ravens such like there's enough birds to drive away those predators.

So if you have enough space for them to breed and they're smaller colonies well
Then they are more susceptible to predation by mainly avian predators

rather than terrestrial predators such as the,

pied oystercatcher would be more susceptible to foxes and such like.

So I've just gone over what the text was there.

So the next one, Liz. OK, this is just the situation in 1993 as far

as national and internationally significant populations of migratory

shorebirds in Botany Bay.

In 93 we had 250 eastern curlew, which as you know now is reduced right

down to 100.

But compared with other areas, we're still doing reasonably well,

even though we've, and that's the, the international of importance,

types of importance is 210.

So at that stage we were above that.

And as you can see, 2023 is down to 100 plus.

Pacific golden plover is a bit of a sad story for Botany Bay compared with the

Hunter.

We we've got zero in the Bay itself, but we do get some at a place called Boat

Harbour, which is a rock platform outside of

Botany of Bay.

But we can't count that as part of the Ramsar site because that is a different

population.

Even though very close. Lesser sandpiper, lesser sand plovers,

threatened species and initially there was a couple of 100 in the Bay that was

of national importance and a bit below the international importance.

But we haven't had lesser sand plover at all in Botany Bay or Boat Harbour in

recent years.

Ruddy turnstone was down-listed.

Some of these birds were actually, they did include Boat Harbour in the

counts for Botany Bay, was a bit disjointed, a bit difficult,

but we've got one sighting in Botany Bay, but we've got probably about 20 of them

at Boat Harbour which is just outside.

Same with the golden plover.

We've got about 20-odd birds that go to Boat Harbour on the rock platform but not

coming into the Bay.

OK, next slide.

OK.

Now this is back in 2012 when the results of all our monitoring,

we've been monitoring now for, since the the Ramsar site was listed.

And we've found that going on the data that we've collected over that time,

they examined these the trends and found that the number of birds declined so low

from the time it was listed.

It's what we call past its limits of acceptable change for the original values

of the Ramsar site in 1984.

So this was brought up at the Ramsar COP and they had at that stage,

the World Wetland Network, coincidentally happened to award some

Wetland Globe Awards.

A Blue Globe is won for a pristine site and looking very well and a Grey Globe is

one of concern.

Towra Point was awarded the Grey Globe because of the declines of that time from

our data.

And then we had to look at that situation again and, I'll talk about it later on.

There had to be a, the Australian government had to come up

with a, the NSW government to come with a

response strategy, what they want to do about these declines.

And that's, I will explain that a bit later on,

but it's not a lot of good news from that point of view.

So as I say, the limits of acceptable changes you see

there was exceeded.

And so and the NSW government had to come up with a response strategy,

which I'll come to a bit later on.

So it's basically on count data.

And also as far as the Ramsar size is concerned,

one of the biggest concerns was an increase in mangroves by 35 percent, 34%,

but a big decrease in saltmarsh.

This is quite significant because saltmarsh is very important habitat for

the golden plovers which have basically disappeared and some of the other birds

that used to use that for roosting and the sharp-tailed sandpipers actually used

to use it for for feeding as well.

So those are some other things that have changed,

part of those changes in the management of the Bay or not sort of management,

sorry.

The effect of all of the dredging and suchlike which we probably talked about

earlier in the previous presentation causing changes in hydrology and

everything else and erosion and wave action on the southern part of Botany Bay.

Next slide.

OK, this is one thing that I did in Botany

Bay as a site.

This was a sand quarry on the southeast part of Botany Bay called unimaginatively

as H1 site, which is now called the Woolooware

Shorebird Lagoon, which you'll see in a moment why it's

called that.

But that's, I was asked to look for an offset site

for the RTA at the time for an impact they had on another wetland.

And I selected this site much bigger than the one that's been impacted on and to do

something with that to create habitat.

So the next one shows, this is the plan so from.

From just the plain lake, 10 metres deep with a couple of islands

on it, we've actually created on the top side

there some intertidal mud flats, which you'll see a better picture of it

later on.

And a bottom right hand side is where, because this was a freshwater deep,

deep lake, 2 metres deep and we connected it to a

channel on the southeast bottom right hand corner of the Bay of the lagoon.

Sorry, to allow sea waters come in and change it

to a brackish situation with tidal changes to make the mud flats,

there exposed and on the low tide and covered at high tide as they would do in

a much bigger Botany Bay situation.

So I think that's, one of the things that you'll see some

images later on about the impact of tall vegetation.

And on the north side there, a lot of tall casuarina trees,

was actually built by the people doing the quarrying of sand and that.

And but yeah, you'll see that situation has changed

somewhat, even for the worse.

But anyway, we've got that right on the shore itself

is free from tall vegetation.

But we've during the process of this process of here,

we actually removed a lot of the mangroves.

Sorry casuarinas, which is very tall on the shore.

We actually removed quite a few of those in the process of creating this habitat

as you see at the moment.

And also mangroves started growing there because once we let the seawater in,

mangrove seedlings came in through the weir and started growing everywhere
because it was fresh.

It was just reeds around the outside and they died when the salt water was allowed.

So that created killed them and created some mudflats.

But we there was a plan of management for this.

Actually this time I was under the Department of Planning.

So we were able to do this and there was lots of other things we could do there.

But once we'd got to this stage, the Department of Planning decided to

they didn't want to retain the land anymore and it was included into the

Towra Point Nature Reserve and therefore the Ramsar site.

Anyway, we'll go on the next slide.

Here's the weir I put in to hopefully keep out most of the mangrove seedlings

coming in from the left from the channel into the lagoon,

which is on the lake which is on the right.

This needs remodelling.

It's sort of falling into disrepair now because it hasn't been managed because of

lack of resources, but that was part of the design as well.

So we'll go on beyond that because what's happening,

if you don't keep the mangrove seedlings out, you have to manage a different way.

So this is now the deep, the deep water lake, 10 metres deep.

We got some machines in there and laser levellers on bulldozers and we pushed

some of the sand from around the shores supplemented from other fill material

available from council that had surplus material from other dredge operations.

And we put all that in there.

This is the start of that.

Then the next one just goes on to the finishing touches and you see we've got a

pretty large intertidal mud flat.

And as you'll see, this is sort of created on along the

lines of some other work I've done overseas in creating similar sorts of

wetlands and particularly for migratory shorebirds and such like.

There's not many of these sort of sites in Australia, if any,

and not so many in the flyway either.

So anyway, this has been successfully used in a

couple of other countries where I've worked to create intertidal mud flats and

the islands you saw are still there.

Can't see them behind the machines, as roost sites.

So this is to add some extra habitat to the area to try to make up loss for lost

habitat within the Bay.

Next slide.

So this is just afterwards, you see migratory shorebirds there.

And of course the old white ibis always gets a look-in as well.

So it's succeeded in this objective of offsetting the wetland that was being

impacted by the RTA.

So everyone was happy with that situation.

But then I say once it was handed across to Parks and Wildlife Service,

unfortunately the funding at the time was not sufficient to follow the plan of

management.

And that's still a thing we're working on with the Local Land Services who helped

to get the funding for some of this work.

Now, not the the machines and that, but to,

to maintain what we had created that last picture before where you see that extent

of mud flats. Next one.

This is what I was talking about.

Migratory shorebirds do not like tall vegetation and this is done for some work

many years ago by Wayne Lawler in looking at the lots of estuaries in NSW and

worked out this is the distance that they like to be away from tall vegetation.

The reason for this, they like to have a clear view around

them to see potential aerial predators.

If they're not, they feel uncomfortable and leave the

site.

And little terns when they're nesting have the same situation, they don't like,

they like their little bits of vegetation to stabilise around their nests.

Little chicks can go and hide in that, but they won't use sites once they've

become overgrown with mangroves or other tall vegetation.

Next slide.

OK, Now this is the one I showed you before

on the left and this is today's image from aerial mapping.

And you'll see a much fuzzier effect on the north shore,

which is where all the vegetation is now encroached across onto the shorelines,

including tall casuarinas and this one has mangroves as well.

So there's a whole lot of area there which has since been cleared and that's

got to be cleared on a regular basis there.

But and as so we've lost a lot of the open aspect for migratory shorebirds.

So the numbers of birds have really dropped off at that site and we're

currently working on that process.

Now this year, we're now between the birds away on the

breeding ground.

So this is the time to get in there and do some work so we're not disturbing the

birds.

So there's quite a lot of work to do and this is where we're at this stage. Next.

So a lot of the work they've done, you see the top right hand picture,

is a bit reminiscent of the machines I had in,

in the Woolooware Shorebird Lagoon.

And there's some work done in 1965 where we were doing everything with a

wheelbarrow and a shovel, occasionally.

They got a little machine in there, but it was all hard work and an island in

that middle, bottom right and middle corner.

Middle image on the right was creating islands using sugar bags and rocks and

gravel and that to keep it clear of vegetation.

And the bottom right.

And there's the now famous wader scrape in the UK, at a place called Minsmere.

And it's still a famous site now and it's much bigger and much better managed.
Bottom left is the sluice gates we made out of driftwood and so it was a pretty tough job.

The top left hand corner is also another picture of the wader scrape. Next one.

OK we used that design in Mai Poi in Korea in,

in Hong Kong and that's been a very successful site as well.

That's another very famous site, but using similar technology we've increased improved a lot of the habitat there as well.

So I've got some proposals here is to extend the boundaries of the Ramsar site to include existing aquatic reserve, which as you saw right at the very beginning where we had the picture of the aquatic reserves and the nature reserve together.

One important reason for that is that the island you saw actually moved through that movement outside of the boundary of the nature reserve.

So we're really, we're pretty keen to retain it, now it's stopped moving and can work on it.

So it's still retained as part of the Ramsar site.

But the best thing is to include the aquatic reserve, which is the values of the aquatic reserve meet the same requirement for Ramsar for wise use of wetlands and they're protected from any commercial fishing and everything else.

So that would help a lot if we can get that boundary of the Ramsar site.

So you've got the nature reserve and the Ramsar site as it is and aquatic reserve, that would help immensely.

And the other one's still working on the Woolooware Shorebirds lagoon.

We need to remove the damaged weir, undershot weir and do that, remove the vegetation that's invaded over the original lagoon and treat the surface of the two islands to create suitable habitat for little terns.

And they had to be really, they like to use sand with very little on it, some shell grit, but they don't like to be closed in.

So that can be done relatively easily, but with some additional funding because all this costs a lot of money.

The monitoring we do is fairly inexpensive.

But when you come to this sort of work and at the moment, as I say, they're clearing the tidal flats again from mangroves, which were allowed to grow through lack of resources right at the beginning after we did the, it was annexed into the nature reserve.

So there were all these sort of things have been put in place for management plan for ongoing habitat management. Next.

OK.

Now some of the biggest problems we've had is actually getting better communication and cooperation between different government agencies.

I don't know if many of you have heard about the Marine Estate Management Authority, it came up in 2016 where let's say for coastal wetland protection and all of these agencies are really part of that.

We need to work a lot more closely there.

When we first had the response strategy, we did have a workshop where a lot of government agencies were brought together and we came up with the response strategy.

It was a joint effort between quite a few.

So we need to work back into that.

So really we want to work very hard now to get all of these agencies together over this next couple of years or so because everyone's interested in the same sort of habitat.

We don't want to sort of compete with Fisheries over habitat because it's the same sort of habitat we want to protect for little shorebirds and others as well.

So that's where we're sort of at basically.

I think you might have another slide there.

Yeah.

So, so the data collected for the Towra Point Ramsar site was critical in this finishing up with a response strategy by the NSW Government and that was finalised in 2019.

So and from that they found that resources for the scale of appropriate management, key drivers of the change operating out of scale well outside of the control of the site managers.

So the site managers have not really been able to, wouldn't be capable to handle things as they've been going.

So that's got to be looked at.

But unfortunately, as you'll probably guess, the environment in NSW and Australia generally is not at the top of the budget from governments, particularly in NSW, the Parks and Wildlife Service.

So there should be, it was recommended that there should be baseline studies and monitoring to elevate the progress of little terns, continue to monitor total numbers of little terns across the summer season and implemented as, the implementers.

There was suggested it should be the Local Land Services which is being at the moment, but we're going to work on that with the islands and the lake over the next couple of seasons.

Well, while they're away at the moment. Migratory shorebirds is going to continue monitoring the diversity in populations of migratory bird species at key sites and at any new sites such as the river lagoon and anything else we come up with is again that's it was suggested that this should be implemented with partners, including the Local Land Services.

The review and reporting. The purpose of the response strategy to halt the decline and improve the ecological conditions of the Ramsar site as soon as feasible so that the evidence is available to support the removal of the site from the Article three point two of the Ramsar Convention, which is which it was listed as a site of concern and there's still that there and the Australian Government particularly does not want it struck off the list as Ramsar site.

So communications with the, this all started with communication with the Greater Sydney Local Land Services back in 2017, which led to the conclusion that the ongoing monitoring that we've done for so many years and, little terns and pied oystercatchers, should continue in the long term to monitor the long term monitoring programme put in place prior to the listing of the site as a wetland of concern.

I think that's about it there.

Sorry about a bit of a rush.

It's quite a few things to cover.

So basically the Ramsar site was gazetted in 1984 as a site of international importance.

And because of changes in the Bay and then industry, the airports and ports and everything else around there, a lot of changes and all the sites on the northern side have since disappeared.

So it's more important now on the south side at the Ramsar site that we get it right and we've got a fair bit of work to do,

but it's a bit of a battle without large resources.

But we're getting there and some of the things that we've got in line, hopefully we'll retain the bids at the numbers similar to what we've got at the moment.