World Migratory Birds Day

CEBU, Philippines - As part of this year's World Migratory Birds Day (WMBD) celebration, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-7 spearheaded a series of awareness campaign including lectures, bird watching, public discussions and other educational and public events starting yesterday and will continue today.

With this year's theme "Migratory birds and people - together through time", the World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD), is an annual global awareness-raising campaign which highlight the need for the protection of migratory birds and their habitat.

DENR 7 Regional Executive Director Maximo O. Dichoso said migratory birds are important to achieve a balanced and healthy ecosystem as he enjoined everyone in promoting and raising public awareness about migratory birds and its importance.

Avian migration is a natural process, whereby different birds fly over distances of hundreds and thousands of kilometers in order to find the best ecological conditions and habitats for feeding, breeding and raising their young.

The event was initiated in 2006 and celebrated on the second weekend of the month of May. WMBD celebration takes place in many different countries and places, but are all linked through a single global campaign and theme.

The OIWS is a sanctuary for migratory birds and other marine species in the Olango Island Group located about five kilometers east of Mactan Island, Cebu.

"Every year from September to April, the birds use the wildlife sanctuary as a wintering ground and feeding station in their annual southward migration to Australia and New Zealand," Dichoso said.

He added the birds then stop at the wildlife sanctuary in their northward migration back to the Northern Hemisphere to breed during the summer months from June to August.

Tourists and bird-watching enthusiasts usually visit the wildlife sanctuary in the months of July to November during the winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

Based on the inventory, there are 97 species of birds in the Olango Island Group consisting of 48 migratory species, while the remaining 49 species are native to the island. Some species of the migratory birds that stop at the wildlife sanctuary are considered endangered.

The Philippine government in 1992 declared the 1,020 hectares of tidal flats in the Olango Island Group as a protected area. The tidal flats in the island group are also home to various species of marine invertebrates that are the primary food of the migratory birds.-(FREEMAN)