Abstract: Coastal wetlands are important to waterbirds conservation. However, some coastal wetlands in China were cultivated greatly, resulting in the coastal wetlands qualities declines, and harm to the waterbirds and their habitats. Some of these wetlands have been cultivated to rice farms through large-scale mechanized planting, which had significantly negative impacts on the migratory waterbirds. In this study, we propose a new way to reform those rice fields, it can match the both requirements of rice growth and waterbirds habitats. The key step of the experiment is to set up a pond with an open water area in the rice field, and build ecological islands in the pond unit, thus create an agro-ecological system that can provide waterwirds habitats while the rice can be cultivated inside. To explore how this new technology benefit waterbirds’ biodiversity, we selected two sites (10 ha for each) on the Chongming Island (Shanghai, China), the experimental site rice fields are treated by above technology and the control site fields are cultivated by common industrial managements. In this experiment, we carried out fifteen times of waterbird surveys between August 2013 and May 2014. A total of 34 species were recorded with waterbirds density of 41.87 ± 6.62/hm2 in the experimental rice fields, whereas only 12 species were recorded at the control site with waterbirds density of 2.08 ± 0.45/hm2. The results of this study suggest that this technology could significantly increase waterbirds biodiversity in the present rice fields, and it may be applied to other coastal wetlands restoration in China.