The Liaohe River Estuary National Nature Reserve, a critical coastal wetland in China, supports the world’s largest breeding population of the endangered Saunders’s Gull. However, changing hydrological conditions and rapid vegetation overgrowth had degraded the suitability of its nesting habitat, threatening the species’ reproductive success.
To counter this, a targeted habitat management strategy was implemented, combining precisely timed seawater infusion and mechanical vegetation control. This approach effectively restored open nesting areas with low vegetation cover-key requirements for Saunders’s Gull breeding. The intervention led to a notable recovery in the Saunders’s Gull population, which grew from 5,500 to 11,000 individuals. Demonstrating a practical, science-based model for species-specific habitat restoration and management, this case offers a scalable example for conserving endangered waterbirds in dynamic coastal environments.