Impact of Distinct Management Regimes on Wintering Waterbird Communities in China’s Coal Mining Subsidence Wetlands

Natural wetland loss constitutes a primary threat to waterbirds worldwide, increasingly forcing them to rely on expanding artificial wetlands. Extensive underground coal mining across the North China Plain has created numerous subsidence wetlands, which could serve as important alternative habitats for migratory and wintering waterbirds. However, the effects of different management regimes on waterbirds in these novel artificial wetlands remain poorly understood, hindering effective strategies for reconciling human development with waterbird conservation. Here, we conducted a long-term field survey (2017–2025) of wintering waterbirds across 15 subsidence wetlands under four distinct human management regimes in the Huaibei coal mining area. We recorded 22,712 waterbirds of 45 species. We found that high-intensity aquaculture and floating photovoltaic systems were associated with reduced waterbird diversity, increased community dissimilarity, altered species composition, and the loss of multiple threatened species from survey records. We also found that ecological aquaculture and unutilized wetlands may serve as favorable habitats as alternatives to natural wetlands. Our findings demonstrate that subsidence wetlands can provide vital wintering habitats when managed sustainably, but intensive development severely compromises their conservation value. Future research should integrate habitat variables and year-round surveys to optimize management strategies for these expanding artificial ecosystems.