China News Service, Jiamusi, Heilongjiang, October 15 (Reporter Wang Nina) As the leading unit of the "Oriental White Stork Joint Protected Area Network", Heilongjiang Honghe National Nature Reserve (hereinafter referred to as the "Honghe Reserve") launched the autumn monitoring work of the Oriental White Stork in China's Sanjiang Plain on the 15th. After 12 years of continuous satellite tracking and monitoring, Honghe Nature Reserve found that the population of Oriental White Storks has doubled and their migration and habitat range has significantly expanded, demonstrating the effectiveness of wetland ecological protection.
The Oriental white stork is a national first-level protected wild animal in China and is listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Honghe Nature Reserve is located in the East Asia-Australasia migratory bird migration area. It is one of the two core breeding areas of Oriental White Storks in the world and has been rated as the "Hometown of Oriental White Storks in China".
In order to strengthen the coordinated protection of the Oriental White Stork, China's first "Oriental White Stork Joint Reserve Network" was established in December 2025 under the initiative of the Honghe Reserve. This network has covered many regions in China. On the 15th, the "Oriental White Stork Joint Protected Area Network" simultaneously carried out Oriental White Stork monitoring work in Heilongjiang, Shandong, Hebei, Jiangsu and Jiangxi.
In 2026, a total of 107 artificially attracted Oriental White Stork nests were used by Oriental White Storks in Honghe Nature Reserve, of which 89 were successfully bred, showing outstanding results in artificially attracted breeding. Since early October, breeding populations in Heilongjiang, China and the Far East of Russia have begun migrating southward in autumn, with some individuals migrating in an orderly manner along the Songhua River.
Honghe Nature Reserve has carried out special monitoring and scientific research for a long time. In 1995, ring recording monitoring was launched, and in 2015, satellite tracking and monitoring was carried out. In the initial stage, only 8 individuals were tracked. In 2018, the monitoring equipment was iteratively upgraded, replacing traditional "backpack" equipment with high-precision, low-interference "leg loop" equipment, greatly improving data accuracy. Currently, the reserve can track 176 Oriental white storks in real time via satellite, which is the largest dedicated satellite tracking population of Oriental white storks in the world.
Years of continuous monitoring clearly show the population recovery trend: in 2019, the global population of Oriental white storks was only about 5,000, which increased to 12,378 in January 2026, more than doubling the population.
The migratory habitat of the Oriental White Stork continues to expand. Ten years ago, its migration route was limited to the Songhua River Basin to Panjin, Liaoning. Now its activity area has expanded significantly: horizontally from the Sino-Russian border section of the Ussuri River in the east to Inner Mongolia in the west; vertically in the south to the core wintering ground of Poyang Lake in Jiangxi. Some individuals can reach Hong Kong and Macao, China, and a small number have spread to Gansu, Sichuan and parts of the Yellow River Basin. Some Oriental White Stork individuals have passed through North Korea and stopped in South Korea, and their transnational migration range has expanded.
At present, China has built a complete cross-regional protection network from the breeding grounds in Heilongjiang to the wintering grounds in Poyang Lake, established a national synchronous survey mechanism in four seasons, and dynamically monitored changes in population size and distribution. At the same time, China and Russia have established a transnational protection system, regularly shared monitoring data and scientific research results, and worked together to protect the Oriental White Stork's living conditions and continue to improve them.
