BFU establishes Flyway University Alliance

The initiative is designed to steer a decade of scientific collaboration and communication focused on migratory routes, aiming to amass worldwide knowledge and solutions to safeguard migratory birds and their environments.

International Big Science Programs are crucial for advancing knowledge frontiers, exploring the unknown, and addressing major global challenges. Through promoting international cooperation on a migratory flyway scale, Initiative for International Big Science Program on Flyways aims to conduct exchanges of personnel and knowledge, establish a joint monitoring and research network and improve scientific infrastructure and equipment for migratory flyways, and collaboratively conduct synchronized projects on fundamental research and technological innovation on large-scale flyway biodiversity conservation, solving significant world challenges in science. This will help unlock the global mysteries of bird migration, reveal the synergistic relationship between migratory waterbirds, people, and climate change, and provide scientific support for the conservation of large-scale flyway biodiversity.

By bringing together research teams from across migratory flyways, it will jointly apply for large-scale scientific research projects or widely raise funds to carry out the following studies, build Xiong'an Flyway Big Science Center, Network of Key Habitat Long-term Ecological Monitoring Stations in the Migratory Flyway, as well as Joint Laboratory of Migration Ecology and Large Scale Biodiversity Conservation. From top scientists in migratory ecology and conservation biology, an academic committee will be established to provide scientific support for the Conservation of migratory birds and their habitats in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, Central Asian Flyway, with a focus on key areas such as Northeast Asia, the Yellow Sea, and Southeast Asia, as well as relevant countries along the Green Belt and Road.

In 2025, the Flyway University Alliance secretariat will leverage the strengths of member universities to launch a master’s degree program focused on flyway protection. It will recruit students from countries along the flyways and train professionals with an international perspective. Moreover, a summer school will be held in the summer for members, global young scholars, graduate students, and reserve workers to foster a cross - regional research network.

Written by Chen Haoyuan

Edited by Song He and Zhang Duo