Office of Conservation

NEWS and topics of relevance to bird conservation:

Mason Park: Turning the Tide for Shorebirds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dS4iUV0DBo

Birding NSW congratulates volunteers of BirdLife Southern NSW who have done tremendous remedial work at Mason Park Wetlands in collaboration with Strathfield Council. The work involved clearing masses of mangrove seedlings from the central wetland which had almost completely covered roosting and feeding mudflats used by waders, many of them migratory. Other works that remain include improving tidal flows from Parramatta River.

Strathfield Council later provided contractors to assist clearing the heavily forested northern section of the wetland. It is now important that the wider birding community know about this work and the need for ongoing maintenance.

Unfortunately, this news was too late to include in the Birding NSW October-November Newsletter so anyone interested in joining the Friends of Mason Park Wetland group can contact them directly at that address.

(Disclaimer: The Editorial Office and Committee of Birding NSW take all care to verify material published on the website and in print. The authors remain responsible for images and opinions expressed and should be contacted prior to quotations)

A comment from Birdlife Southern NSW

“BirdLife Southern NSW has several concerns regarding the content of the video but in particular at around 4 mins in. Several long term surveyors share our concern.

It is incorrect to state that shorebird numbers have crashed in Mason Park alone – a ‘population decline not reflected in other sites in the area or across the country.’ This is our greatest point of concern.

This statement ignores the long-term shorebird counts in the Parramatta River estuary and indeed further afield – where nearly all shorebird numbers have declined significantly.”