Waterbird Populations in Eastern Australia Drop by 50% Due to Dry Conditions
Eastern Australian waterbird populations have plummeted by 50% due to prolonged dry conditions.
TroibNews 
Waterbird populations in eastern Australia have plummeted by half within a year due to dry conditions.
The latest annual survey of waterbirds, conducted by the University of New South Wales Sydney, recorded 287,231 birds from August to October, a significant decrease of 50.4 percent from the 579,641 birds counted in 2023.
This survey, conducted annually by researchers and governmental partners since 1983, encompasses a third of the Australian mainland and serves as a crucial dataset for assessing the health of biodiversity in river and wetland regions.
The decline in bird numbers has been linked to increasingly dry conditions, which have led to reduced waterbird breeding in 2024 following the wet years of widespread flooding in 2021 and 2022.
Richard Kingsford, the survey leader from UNSW, stated, "We know that when it starts to dry up, the floodplains dry up and waterbirds do not have the food to breed in large numbers, so they concentrate on remaining lakes and swamps, which is what we saw this year."
He added, "We had a good bounce in numbers after good breeding in the flood years of 2021 and 2022, but numbers have now dipped below the long-term average again, with little breeding in 2023 and 2024."
The 2024 survey results indicated ongoing significant declines in three critical indicators of waterbird health: overall numbers, the number of breeding species, and the total size of wetland areas.
The total area of wetlands surveyed was 122,283 hectares, which the report noted is considerably below the long-term average.
The northwestern regions of Queensland, covering the northeastern part of the continent, recorded the highest abundance of waterbirds, accounting for 17 percent of all birds observed in the survey.
Mathilde Moreau for TROIB News
The latest annual survey of waterbirds, conducted by the University of New South Wales Sydney, recorded 287,231 birds from August to October, a significant decrease of 50.4 percent from the 579,641 birds counted in 2023.
This survey, conducted annually by researchers and governmental partners since 1983, encompasses a third of the Australian mainland and serves as a crucial dataset for assessing the health of biodiversity in river and wetland regions.
The decline in bird numbers has been linked to increasingly dry conditions, which have led to reduced waterbird breeding in 2024 following the wet years of widespread flooding in 2021 and 2022.
Richard Kingsford, the survey leader from UNSW, stated, "We know that when it starts to dry up, the floodplains dry up and waterbirds do not have the food to breed in large numbers, so they concentrate on remaining lakes and swamps, which is what we saw this year."
He added, "We had a good bounce in numbers after good breeding in the flood years of 2021 and 2022, but numbers have now dipped below the long-term average again, with little breeding in 2023 and 2024."
The 2024 survey results indicated ongoing significant declines in three critical indicators of waterbird health: overall numbers, the number of breeding species, and the total size of wetland areas.
The total area of wetlands surveyed was 122,283 hectares, which the report noted is considerably below the long-term average.
The northwestern regions of Queensland, covering the northeastern part of the continent, recorded the highest abundance of waterbirds, accounting for 17 percent of all birds observed in the survey.
Mathilde Moreau for TROIB News
