Almost the entire world population of the critically endangered Siberian Crane winters at Poyang Lake in the mid Yangtze River Basin of China.  More than 3,000 Siberian Cranes move widely over the 400,000 hectares within the Poyang Lake Basin, where the cranes are sensitive to the availability of Vallisneria, a submerged aquatic plant in turn influenced by greatly fluctuating water levels within and between years.

The International Crane Foundation (ICF) and Poyang Lake National Nature Reserve (PLNR) have been conducting a long term study of the ecological relationships between plants, water and wintering waterbirds in PLNR. Initiated in 1998, this research focuses on habitat use patterns of Siberian Cranes, Tundra Swans and Swan Geese within the reserve, roughly 5% of the total lake, and the factors that influence those patterns. This project seeks to apply this ecological understanding towards designing conservation programs for the lake basin and implementing targeted management strategies within protected areas.

Through this project, a Geographic Information System (GIS) for Poyang Lake Basin has been developed by the Mountain, River and Lake Information Center in Jiangxi Province and is now being used to develop models that extrapolate from the reserve to the entire Poyang Lake Basin. These models will help assess potential impacts from projects that alter land-use or water budgets within the watershed affecting Poyang.

Already our research, together with related studies by others concerning hydrology, land use, and Vallisneria, is helping the Chinese Government understand what this crane population needs to survive and to evaluate implications of developments now being considered, including a dam across the mouth of Poyang Lake that would drastically alter hydrology and productivity of the system.

This research is supported in part by the UNEP/GEF Siberian Crane Wetland Project, executed by the State Forestry Administration in China.

This update was published in the IUCN newsletter, Species 49. Click on the image to the left to view the full issue.

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Last update: 23 January 2009

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