Jason Jia Hong Teo’s scientific contributions

Mainland Southeast Asia supports some of the richest faunas in the Old-World tropics, overlapping entirely with the megadiverse Indo-Burma and Sundaland biodiversity hotspots, and major bird migratory routes in the East Asian- Australasian Flyway. The exploitation of wildlife for food, medicines, ornaments and other human uses is a well-known threat to Southeast Asia’s biodiversity and has been linked to the declines and extirpations of many of the region’s mammal and bird species. Detailed studies of waterbird trapping in the 1980s then showed that large volumes of waterbirds were harvested in parts of Southeast Asia by local communities for food, reaching potentially unsustainable levels for some rail and shorebird species. However, there is little information or research on the present status of bird hunting and trapping activities across mainland Southeast Asia whilst studies on the wild (bush) meat trade, and available information in the grey literature (i.e. news articles, Youtube videos) has alluded to high levels of bird hunting in several parts of the region. To (1) address knowledge gaps on the extent in which hunting and trapping pressures are affecting wild bird populations, and to (2) build the evidence base to inform decision-makers and guide conservation actions, we undertook a situation analysis with a focus on the six countries of mainland Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Viet Nam and Thailand, as well as Bangladesh which shares a similar biota with the region.

With land use change rapidly increasing in Asia, conservation prioritisation has emerged as an important tool in identifying critical landscapes for biodiversity to safeguard them from human pressures. In Peninsular Malaysia, the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS/BirdLife in Malaysia) developed a set of Criteria to identify Important Hornbill Landscapes (IHLs)-hornbill hotspots which are conservation priority sites in Malaysia and serve to inform land use planning and conservation action. Application of the Criteria has so far been restricted to Peninsular Malaysia, thus in this study, we adapt it to Sarawak, a Malaysian state in Borneo that supports 80% of the hornbill species diversity in the country. We expand on this conservation prioritisation methodology using Maximum Entropy Species Distribution Modelling (MaxEnt), to validate the Cri-teria's applicability and to identify potential IHLs in Sarawak. Our data sources included literature reviews, citizen science databases and interviews. Expectedly, survey effort was spatially biased. We identified eight IHLs, mostly concentrated in eastern Sarawak, across national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and forest management units. Existing published literature on the distribution of hornbill habitats in Sarawak corroborated with our MaxEnt outputs which aligned with the results of the IHL Criteria-based assessment, validating the latter and supporting its use in Sarawak. We additionally identified six potential IHLs based on MaxEnt outputs which confirmed the value of pairing MaxEnt with the Criteria-based assessment, for such a prioriti-sation exercise. To our knowledge, this study not only demonstrates the significance of combining MaxEnt and the Criteria for IHL identification, but it also represents the first application of the IHL Criteria outside of Peninsular Malaysia. Our findings can, therefore, serve as a case study for future applications of IHL Criteria in Borneo and potentially for other parts of Asia.

Bako-Buntal Bay in Sarawak, Malaysia is among the most important coastal wetlands for migratory shorebirds in Borneo, and in insular Southeast Asia. However, since the multi-year waterbird surveys of the Sarawak coast during 2010–2012, there has been little published work on migratory shorebirds here. Our study assessed the status and populations of migratory waterbirds utilizing two sites within Bako-Buntal Bay: (1) the extensive mud and sand flats of Buntal Bay used as a neap tide roost site, and (2) the man-made (ash) ponds at Sejingkat regularly used as spring tide roost sites. We counted waterbirds twice a month from October 2018 to March 2019, and compiled monitoring data from the Asian Waterbird Census and other surveys starting in either 2006 or 2007. We found a total of 32 waterbird species in Buntal and 31 species in Sejingkat, including globally significant numbers of four threatened species: Far Eastern Curlew Numenius madagascariensis (EN), Great Knot Calidris tenuirostris (EN), Nordmann’s Greenshank Tringa guttifer (EN), and Chinese Egret Egretta eulophotes (VU). Our study showed that the total counts of waterbirds at Buntal, and especially Sejingkat, have increased consistently from 2006–2007 to 2019, particularly with an increasing trend for Far Eastern Curlew and a sudden increase in Great Knot numbers in 2019. Using flag resightings, we established connections between our study sites and sites along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, e.g. Chongming Island in Shanghai, China and Kamchatka in Russia. We are unsure of the factors driving the increase of shorebird numbers, but hypothesize a possible decline in habitat extent and quality elsewhere on Borneo or in the wider Southeast Asian region. Our work demonstrates the continued importance of Bako-Buntal Bay for shorebirds, especially the Far Eastern Curlew, in Southeast Asia, and the need for sustained conservation measures.