Bid to save sandpiper at risk of extinction in Russia (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Matt Walker
Editor, BBC Nature

Conservationists have embarked on a mission to save one the world's rarest birds, the spoon-billed sandpiper, from extinction.

Fewer than 200 pairs of spoon-billed sandpipers were thought to exist in 2009, and since then, the population has thought to have declined by a quarter each year.

So a specialist team of bird experts are flying to the sandpiper's home in northeast Russia to collect and incubate eggs and set up a captive breeding population.

The captive population of spoon-billed sandpipers will be housed in Moscow Zoo for quarantine purposes, then moved to a specially built unit at the headquarters of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, UK.

The emergency mission is being undertaken by the WWT and Birds Russia, working with colleagues from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), BirdLife International, ArcCona, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force and Moscow Zoo.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/13627796