A photo of a rare bird was captured by an assistant researcher on May 7 in Mazhou Island located in the county level city of Jingjiang – administered by Taizhou city in East China's Jiangsu province.
The bird has been identified as a yellow-breasted bunting, which was rated "critically endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2017 and was also listed as a national top-level protected species in China in 2021.
A magnificent view of the yellow-breasted bunting, whose most distinctive feature is its plume of bright yellow feathers on its chest. [Photo/zhjjwx.jsjjw.cn]
"Yellow-breasted buntings are migratory travelers, mainly inhabiting large rice paddies, reedbeds or tall grass and wet thorn bushes and they are very sensitive to their habitat," said Wei Huiyu, the assistant researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
In its bid to take care of the indigenous creatures of Mazhou Island, plans are for Jingjiang to implement a series of projects to restore more than 2,000 mu (133.33 hectares) of native wetlands and more than 10,000 mu of new mudflat wetlands on the west side of the island.
Furthermore, Jingjiang has established goals to develop a field observation and test platform for biodiversity conservation in the lower Yangtze River and to create a national scientific observation and research station for environmental protection in the next three to five years.