The first spoon-billed sandpiper chicks have hatched in a captive breeding scheme to bring the bird back from the brink of extinction

This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

The first spoon-billed sandpiper chicks have hatched in a captive breeding scheme to bring the bird back from the brink of extinction.

Conservationists said 17 chicks have hatched from eggs taken from breeding grounds in Chukotka, in the Russian far east, in the emergency bid to establish a captive population.

The team of experts led by staff at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) and Birds Russia is attempting to save the critically endangered sandpiper, one of the world's rarest birds, whose numbers had fallen to an estimated 120-200 pairs in the wild by 2009.

The hope is the captive population, which will be taken via a month's quarantine in Moscow zoo to be reared at WWT's Slimbridge centre, Gloucestershire, will provide birds for future reintroduction and act as a safety net in case the species dies out.

Some eight chicks emerged as the team prepared to leave Chukotka by boat, and despite rough seas, a further nine hatched en route to the town of Anadyr where the team will allow them to grow before the onward journey to Moscow.

WWT's head of conservation breeding, Nigel Jarrett, said: "We boarded the boat with the eight newly hatched chicks, 12 fertile eggs, considerable anxiety about the trip on rough seas and a great deal of hope.

"We got off the other end with only three eggs, but an amazing 17 chicks and the remaining eggs poised to hatch any day, so I am as happy as happy can be."

Elizabeth Tambovtseva, from Birds Russia, said: "The excitement from the team when the first egg hatched and a tiny chick appeared was off the scale - we haven't slept for days with the stress and worry so it was a pretty emotional experience.

"All the partners have been working hard as a team to pull off this very important stage of the mission and it's paid off."

Despite the success so far, the team says a couple of the chicks are weaker than others and they are likely to lose a few.

Saving the species also remains an uphill battle, they said.

The migratory wading bird's numbers are thought to be declining by around a quarter each year due to very low survival rates of juvenile spoon-billed sandpipers and could go extinct within a decade without action to help it.

The sandpipers are being hit by hunting in their wintering grounds in Burma, and by damage to habitats on their migration "flyway" along the coasts of Korea, China and Japan.

While efforts are being made to tackle the threats to the species in the wild, it will not be possible to turn round the sandpiper's fortunes quickly enough to save it from extinction without securing a captive breeding population, the conservation groups said.