The East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF) supports a greater diversity of migratory shorebird species than any other flyway in the world. The EAAF also includes the largest number of imperilled shorebird species. Though the main cause of population declines is habitat degradation, we have focused this paper on hunting, which is locally practiced in some regions of the EAAF and exacerbates shorebird population declines. Understanding the ability of populations to withstand harvest mortality without significant risk of extirpation or extinction is critical to the development of effective management plans. We used a harvest theoretic approach to estimate sustainable mortality limits for migratory shorebird populations within the EAAF. For species with adequate demographic data, annual sustainable mortality estimates ranged over five orders of magnitude from 70,140 to just four birds. The populations that were most vulnerable to mortality were Spoonbilled Sandpiper (Calidris pygmaea) and the Dunlin subspecies (C. alpina actites), with maximum harvest limits of 4 ± 1 birds and 16 ± 4 birds, respectively. These mortality limits provide a means of evaluating whether current harvest levels are unsustainable; however, there is a clear need for additional research focused on shorebird populations in the EAAF. Many of the most recent population size estimates in the literature are dated, life-history information for nearly half of shorebird species is lacking, and for many other species, is poorly understood at the level of populations or subspecies. For these reasons, sustainable mortality estimates reported here should be considered as initial benchmarks for future refinement as more demographic data become available.