The Crimean peninsula and Azov Sea are situated on a main flyway of migratory birds on their route to the Balkans and the Near East. There are two major Black Sea migratory waterbird flyways. One is an east-west flyway spans the northwestern shelf of the Black Sea, and is used by waterbirds enroute to wintering habitats in the western Black Sea, along the Adriatic Sea, and Africa. A north-south flyway crosses the Crimean peninsula and the Black Sea to Africa. The marshes, lagoons, and mudflats in the eastern part of the project region, where these two flyways intersect, are a critical link in both flyways. These wetlands are also critical to species that migrate in a dispersed pattern rather than along defined flyways such as the curlew sandpiper, which rely on these wetlands in their migrations between Scandinavia and the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.