Salt Flats as Bird Habitat

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Salt Flats as Bird Habitat

This is BirdNote. 

    [Cabo Rojo soundscape]

In the Salt Flats of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, the Indigenous Taino people found a way to harvest salt long before Europeans arrived. But this unique ecosystem isn’t just useful for sea salt production — it’s also vital to shorebirds. The salty lagoons are full of brine shrimp for the birds to eat. Oscar Diaz helped establish a protected area for birds here to ensure they could keep using the salt flats.

Oscar Diaz: Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge — it's only about 1800 acres. But wait a second. It's not about size. It's about the ecological importance of the areas that you manage. Well, Cabo Rojo being so small is very, very important for the purposes of conserving migratory and resident shorebirds.

    [Willet calls]

Oscar’s a retired biologist. He says the refuge was created thanks to local residents banding together, and it will take everyone to make sure that crucial habitats like this one stay protected. 

Oscar Diaz: Everybody in Puerto Rico have to be conscious of the important resources that we have in this little piece of island and the ones that we are basically destroying almost every day, almost every day.

Learn more about Puerto Rico’s one-of-a-kind bird habitats on the Threatened podcast. Listen in your favorite podcast app or at BirdNote.org. I’m Ari Daniel.

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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Willet ML341301351 recorded by José A. Colón López.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote February 2023
Narrator: Ari Daniel

ID#  caborojo-01-2023-02-13    caborojo-01