The Far East taiga forest: unrecognized inhospitable terrain for migrating Arctic-nesting waterbirds?

• Published in: PeerJ
• Main Authors: Xin Wang, Lei Cao, Inga Bysykatova, Zhenggang Xu, Sonia Rozenfeld, Wooseog Jeong, Didier Vangeluwe, Yunlin Zhao, Tianhe Xie, Kunpeng Yi, Anthony David Fox
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: PeerJ Inc. 2018
• Subjects: East Asian-Australasian Flyway; Ecological barrier; Geese; Satellite tracking; Siberian crane; Swans; Medicine; R; Biology (General); QH301-705.5; Arctic; taiga
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4353; https://doaj.org/article/8122cfd9911b48c89cdd777cce9a19e6

The degree of inhospitable terrain encountered by migrating birds can dramatically affect migration strategies and their evolution as well as influence the way we develop our contemporary flyway conservation responses to protect them. We used telemetry data from 44 tagged individuals of four large-bodied, Arctic breeding waterbird species (two geese, a swan and one crane species) to show for the first time that these birds fly non-stop over the Far East taiga forest, despite their differing ecologies and migration routes. This implies a lack of suitable taiga refuelling habitats for these long-distance migrants. These results underline the extreme importance of northeast China spring staging habitats and of Arctic areas prior to departure in autumn to enable birds to clear this inhospitable biome, confirming the need for adequate site safeguard to protect these populations throughout their annual cycle.