Much of that growing demand for coastal recreation and tourism has focused on countries in
South and Southeast Asia in the tourism megaregion that this book refers to as Tropical Asia.
As such the recreational disturbance of shorebirds in Asia is a serious conservation issue at
a time when populations of both migratory and non-migratory species of shorebirds are
threatened and declining because of the loss of coastal habitat and increased human
disturbance. Despite global awareness about the impacts that the growth of coastal recreation
and tourism across Tropical Asia is likely to be having on threatened and endangered migratory
and resident shorebird species of the coastal zones of the East Asian- Australasian Flyway
less than 3% of the published peer-reviewed research into the recreational disturbance of
shorebirds addresses coastal zones of Tropical Asia. This situation points to a significant
knowledge gap regarding the impacts of human recreation on shorebirds in the Tropical Asian
region. In contrast almost three quarters of the peer-reviewed articles that report
recreational disturbance research and management strategies focus on coastal zones in North
America (36%) Oceania (20%) and Europe (20%). For those reasons the quantitative systematic
literature review and research case study from Sri Lanka reported in this book provide a call
to action and recommendations for both management approaches grounded in the international
literature and a research agenda that should be implemented in the coastal zones of Tropical
Asia.
