THE YELLOW SEA
The Yellow Sea is a shallow sea located between the Korean Peninsula in the east and China to the west. It has a massive 22,400 km2 of intertidal flats — the largest expanse in the world. Six hundred million people (about 10 per cent of the world's population) live in its catchment area.
The numbers of shorebirds using the Yellow Sea wetlands are staggering: at least 2 million birds, or about 40 per cent of all birds using the East Asian—Australasian Flyway (EAAF), during their northward migration alone. The area supports more than 30 per cent of the EAAF populations of 18 species during northward migration; for six of the species (Bar-tailed Godwit, Eurasian and Eastern Curlews, Great Knot, and Grey and Kentish Plovers), the region carries almost the whole EAAF population at this time.
About 1 million birds use these wetlands on their southward passage.
While most shorebirds use the region's wetlands as migration stopover sites, seven species also occur in significant concentrations during the non-breeding season and five species breed there in important numbers.
The maintenance of healthy intertidal areas in the Yellow Sea is crucial for these shorebirds. Unfortunately, the extent and quality of these areas are being seriously threatened by reclamation, reduced river flows and sedimentation, pollution, and disturbance and competition from humans, particularly in China and South Korea.
Approximately 37 per cent of the intertidal areas that existed in the Chinese portion of the Yellow Sea in-1950, and 43 per cent of the South Korean part that existed in 1917, have since been reclaimed. Extensive reclamation continues: China plans to reclaim a further 45 per cent of the mudflats and South Korea, 34 per cent.
Pied Oystercatchers breed on beaches and along the shores of other coastal wetlands, laying their eggs in simple scrapes on the ground. Nests are often cryptic, making them susceptible-to trampling by walkers or crushing by Eggs and young chicks which have been
abandoned by parent birds disturbed by people, dogs and vehicles are left vulnerable to changes in temperature and predation by foxes, cats and other birds. (Oystercatcher) by Kelvin Jakes; (eggs) by Bianca Priest. Banded Stilt breeding colony, Lake Ballard, WA, 1995. The nomadic Banded Stilt may travel over 1000 km from coastal areas to breed on flooded hypersaline lakes in inland Australia. Eggs can be laid less than 10 days after the rain falls. In 2000, however, two initial breeding attempts at Hughes Island in northern Lake Eyre were disrupted by Silver Gulls: as many as 70,000 eggs and chicks may have been wiped out before the SA Parks & Wildlife Service intervened and eradicated the gulls. This resulted in the successful fledging of approximately 40,000 young stilts after a third breeding attempt. Silver Gulls have multiplied 1000-fold in the last 50 years, and now regularly breed inland.
