The Update: The Result of Long-term Monitoring for Far Eastern Curlew Species by Local People in Sumatra Island, Indonesia

Through the funds provided by the Hwaseong City Government, South Korea via East Asia-Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP) in 2021, we were able to conduct the monthly monitoring run by local people (which later we call the local monitoring team) at two sites in Sumatra Island, Indonesia: Pantai Cemara, Jambi and Bagan Serdang, North Sumatra. The monitoring at Pantai Cemara, Jambi was conducted from December 2021 (right after the Far Eastern Curlew monitoring and identification training activity at Pantai Cemara, Jambi in November 2021) until February 2022. The local team monitoring on Bagan Serdang, North Sumatra was conducted between January and February 2022 (right after the Far Eastern Curlew monitoring and identification training activity in Nov - Dec 2021). The local monitoring teams surveyed the project sites at the end of each month. Although the ideal time for migratory shorebirds’ survey is during the highest tide phase, it is difficult for the local team to arrange their schedule and follow the ideal time to do the survey. Therefore, we schedule them to do the surveys at the end of each month. During the survey period, the local monitoring team at each site collected data on Far Eastern Curlew presented in table 01.   Table 01: Far Eastern Curlew maximum count from monthly monitoring by the local monitoring team on each site   Besides the Far Eastern Curlew species, the local monitoring team also recorded some other migratory shorebirds species (table 02) Table 02: the other migratory shorebird species recorded during the local team survey. Fig 01. The local monitoring team while doing the migratory shorebirds monitoring; from the left: Wahidin (with the binocular), Herman (with the spotting scope), Arif (with the binocular), and Joni (with the spotting scope). ©Cipto/EKSAI. Fig 02: Photo of the North Sumatra - Local Monitoring Team with the Monitoring Team from EKSAI Foundation in November 2020 after the field training ©Cipto, EKSAI.   Indonesia is known as one of the non-breeding sites for Far Eastern Curlew species; yet, the data and information about the species and their sites are limited; and people’s knowledge about this species is so little. Through this activity, we encourage local people: the local monitoring team; to do a migratory shorebirds’ monthly monitoring, focusing on Far Eastern Curlew species as a key species in their site. From the results presented in table 01, we can see that their sites (Pantai Cemara, Jambi, and Bagan Serdang, North Sumatra) are used by the Far Eastern Curlew species regularly during their non-breeding session. Although in January 2022, the local monitoring team of Pantai Cemara, Jambi did not find any Far Eastern Curlew species, we suspect it might be caused by not doing the survey at the ideal high tide period.But we see that in February they found the species again, which can show that Pantai Cemara, Jambi are used by the species during their non-breeding session. We hope that from this activity we can encourage the local monitoring teams to continuously survey migratory shorebirds, especially the Far Eastern Curlew species on their sites; so the conservation of migratory shorebirds and their habitat in Indonesia can be started from the movement of the local people, and in the future, it will create a sustainable conservation action for the migratory shorebirds in Indonesia.   Written by the EKSAI Foundation (contact: ragil.rihadini@gmail.com) Citation: EKSAI Foundation. 2022. Report of Long-Term Monitoring of Far Eastern Curlew by Local Birdwatcher in Sumatra, Indonesia (2021-2022). . EAAFP Secretariat, Hwaseong Eco Foundation, and Hwaseong City. [link]       

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