Chen Shuihua attends the award ceremony held by Pacific Seabird Group online. [Photo/qz123.com]

At the annual meeting of the Pacific Seabird Group in California held on Feb 17 local time, Dr Chen Shuihua, an avian ecologist and curator of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, was awarded a special achievement award for his work in the conservation of the Chinese crested tern, a critically endangered bird.

Chinese crested terns breed mainly on islands off the east coast of China and overwinter in the seas around Southeast Asia. Little has been learned about it since it was named in 1863, except for a few specimen records and inconclusive sightings.

Chen, a native of Jiangshan city, Quzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, is dedicated to the study of urban bird ecology.

In the summer of 2003, Chen led a team on a search for Chinese crested terns.

Chen and his team searched 3,061 islands in Zhejiang province and finally found a mixed breeding colony of Chinese crested terns and great crested terns on the Jiushan Islands in Xiangshan county, Zhejiang province.

From 2013, with support from relevant authorities, Chen led a Chinese crested tern research and protection team to the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History to better protect and restore the Chinese crested tern population.

The Chinese crested tern population restoration project has been implemented in nature reserves Xiangshan and Zhoushan.

The global population of Chinese crested terns has grown from less than 50 in 2010 to more than 200 in 2022 through stable habitat maintenance and successful artificial recruitment techniques.

A nestling of a Chinese crested tern. [Photo/qz123.com]