The 25th Big Bird Race, organised by WWF on 11-12 April 2008, reached a climax on Saturday night after an exciting 24-hour bird-spotting challenge by 14 teams around the Hong Kong territory.

The winning team was The Professionals recording 154 species of birds. The second place in the Race went to the Lee Hysan Sparrows with 144 bird species recorded and the third place went to the Pets Central Wandering Tattlers with 141 species recorded. The total number of bird species spotted by all teams this year was 200.

Hang Lung All Stars Team won the Most Funds Raised Award and the Pentax Cup (for the highest number of individual sponsors) went to HK Electric JPC with over 1,220 individual sponsors. The winner of Cooper's Crippler Plate for Bird of the Day Award (for the rarest or most unusual bird seen during the race) was the Bay Woodpecker seen by the DHL Team at an unexpected site in Tai Po Kau.

The Big Bird Race, started in 1984, aimed to raise funds to take over management of Mai Po gei wai. Since then, it became WWF's annual event to raise funds for the management and conservation of the Mai Po Nature Reserve, as well as to enhance public awareness on Hong Kong's rich biodiversity.

This year, the race raised more than HK$1.3 million which will be spent on the management of Mai Po Nature Reserve and part of the fund will be placed in the Asian Waterbird Conservation Fund (AWCF), to provide financial support for projects on the conservation of migratory waterbirds and their wetland habitats in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Projects from Mongolia to Bangladesh have been funded by AWCF.

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