• Summary
• Text account
• Data table and detailed info
• Map
• Reference and further resources

Site description (2004 baseline)
The estuary with its surrounding coastal plains lie along the coast of Anadyr Bay 25 miles (40 km) south of the city of Anadyr, capital of the Chukotka Autonomous District (64° 10' N; 178° 15' E).

Key biodiversity
These vast, relatively undisturbed wetland complexes are best known for their significant populations of migrating, nesting and molting greater white-fronted geese, emperor geese, brant, bean geese, lesser sandhill cranes, spoon-billed sandpipers, and Aleutian terns. Nesting emperor geese approach 10 percent of their Asian population. The largest brant nesting colony in Asia inhabits Strela Spit with several thousand molting brant favoring Russkaya Koshka Spit. Coastal lagoons in the Tumanskiy refuge are especially important to aggregations of molting common eiders and greater scaup. Nesting whooper swans occur sporadically. There are nesting colonies of Aleutian terns on Zemlya Geka Spit. The combination of tundra-nesting species includes common and king eiders, long-tailed ducks, northern pintails, black scoters, Pacific golden-plovers, dunlins, gray plovers, red and red-necked phalaropes, and Temminck’s stints. The most abundant shorebirds on favored littoral and river-spit habitats in migration include dunlins, rufous-necked stints, red knots, gray plovers and long-billed dowitchers. Shorebird aggregations attract predatory peregrine falcons in summer.

Other notable wildlife: Beluga whales, harbor porpoise, and ringed, spotted and bearded seals follow fish runs into the major rivers. The Siberian salamander occurs here at the periphery of its range.

Acknowledgements
The map polygon is provided courtesy of the Spatial Database on Important Bird Areas of Russia 2014 (© Russian Bird Conservation Union, © Transparent World).

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Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Important Bird Area factsheet: Lower Anadyr lowlands (Russia (Asian)). Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/lower-anadyr-lowlands-iba-russia-(asian) on 22/11/2024.