Shuihua Chen
Dr. Shuihua Chen is the former leader of the restoration project for the critically endangered Chinese Crested Tern (Thalasseus bernsteini, CCT) in Zhejiang Province, China. Dr. Chen led the project during 2003-2019, when he was the Curator of Ornithology at the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History.
Dr. Chen grew up in Zhejiang Province, eastern China. He received a B.S. degree in Zoology from Shandong University, a M.Sc. in Animal Ecology from Hangzhou University, and a Ph.D. in Avian Ecology from Beijing Normal University. Early in his career, he focused his research on urban birds, but in 2003 he got involved with research on seabirds when he initiated a survey for the CCT and other breeding seabirds along the Zhejiang coast. In 2004, he and his team finally found a small breeding colony of CCTs in the Jiushan Islands, which was the second CCT colony to be discovered after the species was rediscovered nesting on the Matzu Islands in 2000, after a 63-year period when the species was presumed extinct. Since then, he has devoted most of his research and conservation efforts to this critically endangered seabird. After four years of surveys and investigations, he concluded that the population of CCTs was very small, less than 50 individuals, and faced several severe threats, including habitat degradation, illegal egg harvest, disturbance, overfishing, and typhoons. Among these, illegal egg harvest was considered the greatest threat to CCTs and other breeding seabirds along the coast of China. Dr. Chen devoted another four years of research on this poorly known seabird, and uncovered new information on its reproductive ecology, which became the foundation for efforts to conserve and restore the species, including targeted protection and social attraction
Meanwhile, Dr. Chen and his team held many different publicity events and educational activities for local people, wrote to the government, called attention to the need for protection, and raised public awareness over the plight of the few surviving CCTs. This was the first attempt at conserving and restoring any seabird species in China, so Dr. Chen and his team were pioneers in this effort. In 2013, using social attraction techniques and with the help of Dr. Daniel Roby from Oregon State University and Simba Chan from Birdlife International Asia Division, Dr. Chen launched the first active colony restoration project for CCTs. The objective was to establish a new breeding colony of Greater Crested Terns (T. bergii, GCT) in the Jiushan Islands, in the hope that CCTs would follow. Thousands of GCTs and at least 19 CCTs colonized the island during the first breeding season. After 10 years of successful breeding, Dr. Chen’s team has successfully established two mixed-species breeding colonies of CCTs on the east coast of China, one in the Jiushan Islands and the other in the Wuzhishan Islands. In 2022, the number of breeding adult CCTs was 139, and 49 chicks were fledged. The global population of CCTs is now more than 3-fold what it was when the project began. The restoration program in Zhejiang Province has been a major factor in preventing the CCT from going extinct and on starting the species on the road to recovery.
In recognition of his dedication to the conservation and restoration of the Chinese Crested Tern and other seabirds in China, and his significant and collaborative contributions toward this goal, the Pacific Seabird Group honors Dr. Shuihua Chen with its Special Achievement Award.
