World's First Bird Airport in China

A wetland reserve in China is set to become a stopover for many migratory birds that share the same flight path around the world.

Tianjin Bird Sanctuary, China. Photo: McGregor Coxall.

Australian landscape architecture firm McGregor Coxall has proposed a 61-hectare Tianjin Bird Sanctuary in China on a former landfill site that would become the world's first "airport" for birds. If all goes according to plan, construction on the sanctuary will begin later this year and is expected to be completed in 2018, according to Mother Nature Network.

Of course, this is not a real airport but a wetland specially designed to accommodate the hundreds, even thousands of migratory birds that land and fly every day, along the East Asia-Australian Flyway. This is one of the nine major global migratory bird flyways, passing through 22 different countries such as China, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand, Russia and Alaska, USA.

The buffer zone of the reserve is 198,000 m2.²is a forest that functions to limit the encroachment of urban development. The reserve consists of three different habitats including reed marshes, islands in the middle of the lake and shallow rapids.

More than 50 species of migratory birds, some of them endangered, can stop at the strictly protected Tianjin Bird Sanctuary, and be well-fed before continuing their long journey.

"The bird airport project is an important world-class sanctuary for endangered migratory birds. It also serves as a green lung for Tianjin," said Adrian McGregor, representative of McGregor Coxall.

According to VNE