Transboundary Policy Perspectives on Migratory Bird Stopover Sites Conservation: A Case Study of Yancheng (China) and Geelong (Australia)

The East Asian–Australasian Flyway (EAAF) is a crucial corridor for migratory birds, but is increasingly threatened by habitat degradation, urbanization, and energy development, with current protected areas failing to adequately cover stopover sites. We examined the legal frameworks, implementation mechanisms, and conservation outcomes of migratory shorebird stopover sites in Geelong (Australia) and Yancheng (China) through a transboundary perspective. Findings reveal that Australia's federal system, although offering flexibility, leads to fragmented governance structures, limiting the ability of national legislation to impose mandatory constraints on cross‐regional habitat management, and causing inconsistent protection standards among different jurisdictions; China's central‐local governance faces coordination and practical challenges due to overlapping departmental responsibilities, which have generated a conflict between the expansion of renewable energy and ecological protection boundaries, exacerbated by a lack of systematic project construction standards. In both cases, migratory shorebirds are rarely considered stakeholders in local planning. These governance gaps constrain effective protection of stopover‐site networks that sustain long‐distance migration. To address these, this review presents a transboundary conservation model that integrates legal harmonization, ecological buffer zones, joint monitoring programs, and sustainable financing mechanisms.