For waders such as Red Knot (Knot), conservation designations such as ‘near-threatened’ or ‘endangered’ are based upon declines and vulnerability of populations that breed in defined areas. What happens when populations mix when they are on migration or in their non-breeding areas? How do we define conservation priorities of mixed flocks? Camila Gherardi-Fuentes, Jorge Ruiz and Juan Navedo invited us to think about this issue in a 2021 Red Knot paper in Bird Conservation International.
Conservation challenges posed by overlapping subspecies
It would be convenient if subspecies of waders kept themselves to themselves but they don’t. In spring, islandica Black-tailed Godwits join limosa in Portuguese and Spanish rice fields. Icelandic populations have been increasing for a century but the Dutch population of limosa dropped by 75% between the 1970s and the period 2007-15 (as described in this blog). Which subspecies…
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