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| Albatrosses, seen resting on Torishima Island, are among rare migratory birds of Northeast Asia. |
Japan will launch a project next fiscal year to track the movements of rare migratory birds in Northeast Asia such as the albatross and Saunders' gull, according to Environment Agency officials.
Radar transmitters will be attached to birds to track their migration patterns and habitats by satellite.
Data on the birds will be shared with other countries in the region such as China and South Korea and the United States in a bid to strengthen international conservation efforts, they said.
The radar transmitters are already being used by the Wild Bird Society of Japan to collect data on the hooded crane.
The Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, based in Chiba Prefecture, earlier attached transmitters to some albatrosses that were tracked from Torishima Island, some 600 km south of Tokyo, to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.
Japan has asked U.S. authorities to help in further monitoring the birds, which are believed to have flown on to Hawaii and other parts of the U.S.
Agency officials said the Saunders' gull spends the winter either in Fukuoka Prefecture or southern China after breeding in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning.
They said Kitakyushu is currently working with Chinese authorities to tag the birds to help in identifying their migration routes.