Unregulated and unmonitored recreational shooting swamps in the
Caribbean have claimed perhaps their most notable bird victims, two
Whimbrels. One, named Machi, had been tracked by satellite for two
years over a distance of 27,000 miles. The other, named Goshen, had
been tracked for about one year over nearly 14,000 miles. The birds
were likely exhausted after navigating through severe weather – Machi
having navigated through Tropical Storm Maria, and Goshen through
Hurricane Irene, and were forced to land in Guadalupe, an area they
had avoided in previous recorded migrations.
Both Goshen and Machi were born in the Arctic, and were part of a
collaborative tracking project involving The Center for Conservation
Biology, The Nature Conservancy, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Virginia Coastal Zone
Management Program, and Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences.
Machi had been tracked over 27,000 miles through a total of five
spring and fall migrations between its breeding grounds in Canada and
wintering grounds in Brazil since 2009. On seven different occasions,
the bird flew nonstop more than 2,000 miles, and in the spring of 2010,
it flew more than 3,400 miles directly from Brazil to South Carolina
without rest. Goshen began with the tracking program in the fall of
2010 and was tracked over a total of three migrations. Prior to the
deaths of these birds, the program was tracking a total of four birds.
“The unrestrained sport killing of migrating birds for fun at these
shooting swamps must be stopped by local authorities. The practice is
not only untenable from a wildlife conservation perspective, but it also
robs communities that tolerate it of the potential economic benefits
from wildlife tourism,” said George Fenwick, President of American Bird
Conservancy, the leading national bird conservation organization in
the United States.
According to American Bird Conservancy, shooting swamps are one of
several threats birds face in the Caribbean. Wetlands throughout the
islands are vanishing due to increasing tourism development,
agriculture and urban expansion. More than half of the wetlands that
remain are seriously degraded by the cutting of mangroves and coastal
forest, pollution, water mismanagement, and natural catastrophes such
as droughts and hurricanes. Many threatened birds that rely on these
Caribbean wetlands are now declining.
While the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed, in part, to protect
dwindling numbers of birds that migrate across country borders, both
Guadeloupe and Martinique are part of the European Union and are not
party to the Treaty. Barbados, which also has the distinction of being
the place where the last Eskimo Curlew in the world was shot in 1963,
is an independent state and also not party to the Treaty.