Interview: China, New Zealand looking to widen protection of "world bird" habitats

New Zealand and China could expand a pioneering agreement on protecting wetlands as habitats for migratory "world birds," New Zealand Conservation Minister Maggie Barry said Thursday.

Official conservation agencies in China and New Zealand in March agreed to work together to protect wetlands used as nesting areas on epic bird migrations.

The wetlands are visited by red knots and bar-tailed godwits during their 12,000-kilometer migratory flights.

A memorandum of understanding between New Zealand's Department of Conservation (DOC) and China's State Forestry Administration (SFA) was signed at Pukorokoro Miranda, an internationally significant wetland on the northeast of the North Island.

Barry said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua that she had held meetings with Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand Wang Lutong about progress on the "very ground-breaking" agreement.

She said Ambassador Wang was "a great bird fancier" who had visited Miranda, where thousands of red knots and bar-tailed godwits spend the southern summer.

Wang had "a genuine personal interest as well as a genuine political interest in ensuring that we can protect the wetlands," Barry said in the interview during an official engagement in the North Island city of New Plymouth.

"There is probably going to be further signings around this particular issue in time to come, but there's no need for it currently -- it's progressing well," said Barry.

"The godwits are back in New Zealand. We know that there are safe passages and places for them to land now in China now that the wetlands have been protected," she said.

"It's a very significant agreement between China and New Zealand that was signed and we have every reason to believe that the Chinese conservationists, and political conservationists at that, have a very good understanding of about what's needed to save these world birds," she said.

"They don't just reside in New Zealand or China or Alaska -- they are part of the wider world and I think that the Chinese appreciate that very much as we do."

The red knots breed in Siberia and the godwits in Alaska, but they both land at wetlands in China, to refuel, before flying on to their breeding sites.

DOC and the SFA are working together to protect, manage and restore wetlands where red knots, godwits and other migratory shorebirds stop to feed during annual migrations.

A key wetland covered by the agreement is a 7-km stretch of coastal mudflat and salt ponds at Luannan on Bohai Bay in northern China, where half of the red knots land after flying non-stop from New Zealand.

The red knots refuel on shellfish before flying to their breeding sites in Siberia.

A second wetland covered by the agreement is in the Yalu Jiang Nature Reserve, near Dandong on the Chinese border with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Half the godwits that summer in New Zealand stop over at Yalu Jiang on their way to breeding sites in Alaska.

On a visit to Miranda in March, Vice Minister Chen Fengxue, the Chinese Minister responsible for the SFA, said, "It is humbling to see these small birds that fly non-stop between our two countries.

"They form a bridge between New Zealand and China. They connect us as people. We will work together to keep the bridge open." Endit