Nature reserve in China reports record number of raptors sighted

DALIAN -- The Liaoning Snake Island-Laotie Mountain National Nature Reserve recorded 11,175 raptors in a single day during its autumn raptor monitoring on Monday.

The number, a record high, marks the first time in Chinese mainland that over 10,000 raptors have been recorded in a single day during autumn monitoring.

Located in the Lushunkou district of the city of Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning province, the reserve is an important node on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, with raptors being the most common species among migratory birds in the area.

"The reserve began raptor monitoring in 2018, averaging over 60,000 raptors monitored every autumn," said Wang Xiaoping, deputy director of the reserve's administration. "Last autumn, we recorded a total of 85,567 raptors. As of Sept 23 this autumn, we have already recorded 43,449 migratory raptors. Monitoring the changes in raptor populations is crucial for assessing the ecological health of a region."

The Snake Island-Laotie Mountain biosphere reserve, as a site of the migratory bird along the coast of the Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf of China, was inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO this July.