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Promotion of recreational access is an important strategy that helps to impart conservation values to wetlands and aids in fostering sustainable employment for local communities who live in close proximity to wildlife habitats. Unregulated recreational vehicles in coastal wetlands can cause detrimental impacts on coastal avifauna. There is a dearth of information especially in the South Asian context on the impact of recreational disturbance to waterbirds that can inform the management of wetland destinations. This study examined the response of selected water birds to motor vehicles using multispecies experimental disturbance trials conducted at Bundala National Park, Sri Lanka; a Ramsar-listed wetland of global importance. The selected species had significantly different sensitivities to disturbance caused by motor vehicles (log-rank test,χ²= 51.7, P < 0.05). The probability of a bird responding to a moving vehicle parallel to the bird at a distance of 75 m was greater than 0.6 for all selected species (Calidris minuta, Charadrius alexandrinus, Himantopus himantopus, Limosa limosa, Platalea leucorodia and Mycteria leucocephala) except Hydroprogne caspia. Resting birds appeared to be more affected by recreational disturbance when compared to foraging birds. Larger birds (height of adult bird: 80-105 cm) were more sensitive to recreational stimuli, compared to smaller birds (10-20 cm). In general, responses of birds for recreational stimuli, were prominent up to 100 m from the source. Selected waterbirds showed longer response distances in habitats exposed to high vehicle traffic activity suggesting possible habituation of birds to recurring disturbance. Our findings suggest a minimal setback buffer of 100 m needs to be employed to manage recreational disturbance from motor vehicles at Bundala National Park.

In addition to scoping the impacts of the four most reported sources of recreational disturbance on shorebirds, this study also advances the concept of Tropical Asia (TA) to collectively describe tourist destinations in the ecologically and geopolitically diverse part of the planet that incorporates the tourism megaregion of South and Southeast Asia. At a time of growing global concern about the rapid decline of shorebird populations, many governments in TA are embracing and capitalising on the exponential growth in demand for coastal recreation and tourism across the region. This political response is partly driven by efforts to deliver economic development, aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in order to secure the livelihoods of people living in less developed coastal areas. However, the rapid increase in visitor numbers and the development of infrastructure to support the booming demand for coastal tourism destinations in TA are further exacerbating the pressures on shorebird populations across the region. Despite these growing pressures and the wealth of research reporting on shorebird populations across the Asian flyways, this scoping study identified surprisingly little research that reports on the recreational disturbance (RD) of shorebirds in TA. While undertaken to inform future research, this study also provides a synthesis of management strategies reported in the global literature into a set of management recommendations for coastal destinations in TA.

6G must be designed to withstand, adapt to, and evolve amid prolonged, complex disruptions. Mobile networks' shift from efficiency-first to sustainability-aware has motivated this white paper to assert that resilience is a primary design goal, alongside sustainability and efficiency, encompassing technology, architecture, and economics. We promote resilience by analysing dependencies between mobile networks and other critical systems, such as energy, transport, and emergency services, and illustrate how cascading failures spread through infrastructures. We formalise resilience using the 3R framework: reliability, robustness, resilience. Subsequently, we translate this into measurable capabilities: graceful degradation, situational awareness, rapid reconfiguration, and learning-driven improvement and recovery. Architecturally, we promote edge-native and locality-aware designs, open interfaces, and programmability to enable islanded operations, fallback modes, and multi-layer diversity (radio, compute, energy, timing). Key enablers include AI-native control loops with verifiable behaviour, zero-trust security rooted in hardware and supply-chain integrity, and networking techniques that prioritise critical traffic, time-sensitive flows, and inter-domain coordination. Resilience also has a techno-economic aspect: open platforms and high-quality complementors generate ecosystem externalities that enhance resilience while opening new markets. We identify nine business-model groups and several patterns aligned with the 3R objectives, and we outline governance and standardisation. This white paper serves as an initial step and catalyst for 6G resilience. It aims to inspire researchers, professionals, government officials, and the public, providing them with the essential components to understand and shape the development of 6G resilience.