It currently breeds only on a few small rocky islands off the west coast of North Korea, with four wintering sites at Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam, as well as other places where they have been observed in migration.

Nearly driven to global extirpation in the 1980s, conservation efforts amongst various Asian countries in recent years has helped in bringing its population back onto a steadily increasing trend.

One survey taken by Jin et al. 2008, inquired upon the 'Willingness-To-Pay" factor in the locals, as well as understanding effects on mandatory surcharges compared to voluntary payments.

[5] While it is known that their breeding area covers northeastern China and several islands between North and South Korea,[6] human-assisted breeding efforts have not been overly successful due to the difficulty in sexing the black-faced spoonbills, yet using the polymerase chain reaction technique on DNA samples has allowed researchers to use another method to correctly sex adult Platalea minor specimens.

[5] After migrating to their wintering locations, black-faced spoonbills return with yellow breeding plumage, which extends from the back of their heads to their breasts.

However, there is believed to be another, so far undiscovered colony which provides regional population stability and it is assumed to be probably located in north-east China; for example, on the islands of Liaoning (near the Korean nesting zone).

[8] It is thought that the principal cause of the decline of this species is the destruction of its habitat, more particularly the "valorization" of intertidal mudholes for agriculture, and more recently aquaculture and industrialization.

With the construction of a Shinkansen bridge in the Yatsushiro Sea between 2004 and 2009 next to a very important migration site for the black-faced spoonbills, many feared that it would cause their numbers to decrease.

The need for land to assign to industry is great in the wintering sites in Taiwan, whereas those in Vietnam are being converted for shrimp breeding, though they are within a reserve subject to the Ramsar Convention.

The birds are incapable of catching large fish; therefore many of them rely on the largescale mullets to feed off of in the winter months spent in the wetlands.