Listen to the Birds to Save Mangroves

Picture: Macaranga

In a blog post by Macaranga, Ashley Yeong, Amar-Singh HSS, SL Wong and YH Law explain the relationship between bird diversity and mangrove forests in Malaysia.

“In my estimation, back mangroves are critical to at least half of all mangrove-recorded birds. Their loss is out of all proportion to their relative area,” says Wells, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of birdlife in the region. Generally, mangroves are not immediately associated with birds. But mangroves in Malaysia support at least 144 species of birds, both resident and migratory. In turn, birds help sustain the ecosystem.

Famously, coastal mangrove regions are “important staging and wintering sites for waterbirds,” says MNS. The north-central Selangor coast is recognised as an Important Bird and Biodiversity Area and is located along the East-Asian-Australasian Flyway. This bird migratory route stretches from Russia all the way down to New Zealand. Specifically, mangroves are “much preferred by wintering shorebirds, herons, egrets and storks because of the strategic location that allows easy access to adjacent tidal mudflats as their foraging sites during low tide”.

Many of Malaysia’s mangroves are actually legally protected: of its 586,548 ha, 93.74% are inside permanent reserved forests, and state and national parks. But Malaysia has been losing its mangroves steadily since 1990, according to the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) in its upcoming 2024 report on the status of mangroves shared with Macaranga.