World's first airport for birds in China

A wetland reserve in China will become a stopover for many migratory birds with the same flight path in the world.

Australia-based landscape architecture firm McGregor Coxall proposed the 61-hectare Chinese Tianjin Bird Sanctuary project on an old landfill, making it the world's first "airport" for birds . If all goes as planned, the construction of the reserve will begin later this year and is expected to be completed in 2018, according to Mother Nature Network.

Tianjin Bird Sanctuary, China.(Photo: McGregor Coxall).

Of course this is not a real airport but a specially designed wetland to accommodate hundreds, even thousands of migratory migratory birds, flying daily, along the East Asia - Australia route. This is one of nine major routes of global migratory birds, passing through 22 different countries such as China, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand, Russia and Alaska, USA.

The 198,000m ² protected area buffer zone is a forest that functions to limit the encroachment of urban development. The reserve consists of three different habitats including swamps with many reeds, islands in the middle of the lake and shallow rapids.

More than 50 species of migratory birds, some endangered, can stop at the strictly protected Tianjin Bird Sanctuary, and are provided with enough food before continuing on their long journey.

"The bird airport project is an important conservation area in the world for endangered migratory birds. It also acts as a green lung for Tianjin city" , Adrian McGregor, representative of McGregor Coxall, said.