Last updated: December 1999
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Conservation News
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| Mai Po Update |
| Mitigation in Action |
| Seabirds on Pedro Blanco |
| Japan-US Joint Dunlin Migration Project |
| Colour-ringed Eastern Curlews |
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China Conservation News
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| Past Conservation News |
 Conservation News
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By Mike Kilburn
AFD Hovercraft now in operation
AFD・s long awaited hovercraft has been delivered and is now in operation in the battle to reduce the human disturbance to the birds and other wildlife in Deep Bay from illegal mudskipper fishermen and bird trappers. Initial signs suggest that the hovercraft is giving pause for thought to illegal exploiters of the bay and will be an effective tool for AFD patrols. There is no doubt that the hovercraft will make patrol duties much safer for AFD・s wardens, who formerly were restricted to using mud scooters.
The 6.6 m hovercraft is located at the police post at the southern end of the reserve. It has been deliberately chosen for its quietness and small, manoeuvrable size, in order to limit its impact on the Ramsar site.
Although an area of mangroves has been cut back to provide rapid access to the creek between Mai Po and Lut Chau, the overall benefit to the Ramsar site of more effective boundary enforcement this is a small price to pay.
Long Valley
Pressure on Long Valley has greatly increased following the gazetting of the Lok Ma Chau Spur line, which will drive a railway right across the marsh, while plans for nearby Kwu Tung new town and another road suggest that government has little awareness of the ecological significance of the site. This autumn the Society began its own counts of the site to supplement the already extensive data which demonstrates the tremendous value of Long Valley for birds - over 200 species have been recorded here. Excavations for the river retraining scheme have dramatically shrunk the area available for wildlife on this excellent mosaic of wet and dry agriculture, fishponds and marshy grazing areas.
Despite the construction of the drainage channels, good numbers of scarce birds continue to be found here, including Painted Snipe, Hoopoe, Citrine Wagtail, Japanese Quail, and Woodcock on a single visit in early November, and Northern Lapwing, Ruddy Crake and Northern Skylark on another day later in the month.
The most recent meeting of the Conservation Committee has decided that the new threats to Long Valley are so strong, and that there is no other site with this habitat type which is so attractive to birds that this will become the Society・s flagship conservation project for the foreseeable future.
Tin Shui Wai International Wetland Park
The feasibility study for the International Wetland Park (IWP) has been completed by HKTA and submitted to Legco for approval. If approved, Government will allocate funds towards building the visitor centre and the core zone of the IWP.
Following meetings over several months, HKBWS, WWF and the Conservancy Association eventually persuaded HKTA to write in plans for increasing the total wetland area of the park; HKTA agreed to amend their study to show that the transformation of non-wetland areas to wetland areas is part of the intentions for the medium range plans of the park. It is hoped these new areas will be transformed into a freshwater marsh and a scrape, increasing the habitat types in the park and increasing the attraction of the site for birds.
South West New Territories
The Planning Department unveiled its intentions for South West NT, meaning Lantau and other outlying islands, at a public consultation session in September. This plan proudly designated South Lantau as a zone for leisure and tourism particularly of Hong Kong residents.
Despite promises made by government during the planning and construction of Chek Lap Kok Airport that South Lantau would be left largely untouched, the key move in the plans for southern Lantau are the construction of the North Lantau to Mui Wo link road (at an estimated cost of HK$1.2 billion), the creation of a new town in the Tai Ho Valley, the creation of another new town with a ：baseline population； of 17,000 people in the Mui Wo Valley and the construction of new roads along the south side of Lantau.
The Planning Department claimed that the new town at Mui Wo would act as a gateway to the area, apparently without considering that the principal attraction of South Lantau was the relatively rural environment in the villages, country parks and beaches. Can any readers explain how a town of middle density housing for 17,000 built over a formerly beautiful agricultural valley will act as a representative gateway for a rural leisure area? - it completely defies logic!
The last bulletin has already raised the issue of the Mui Wo - N Lantau Link Road, but this meeting added to the feeling that the Transport Department has precious little justification for building the road except that they want to build one.
There was a very strong negative sentiment against all of the proposed major works in the plan from the great majority of those who offered comments.
Details of a highly successful Society visit to Tai Ho and Mui Wo in September were posted on the website. Highlights included several Dollarbirds over the farmland at Tai Ho, Yellow-rumped, Brown, Grey Streaked and Sooty Flycatchers in the Fung Shui woods in both valleys, Black-winged Stilts on a couple of fields at Mui Wo, Yellow Bittern, Banded Rail, Pallas・ Grasshopper Warbler and over 100 roosting Night Herons and Egrets of various species in the Marsh at Mui Wo. All these birds would face either total or partial removal of their habitat in this area under the current plans.
| Mai Po Update
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By Lew Young, Manager of the Mai Po Nature Reserve
Mai Po Management Plan
Changes to gei wai management
This autumn, the recently completed ．1999 - 2003 Mai Po Management Plan・ will be presented to the Wetland Advisory Committee of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department for final endorsement. It is hoped that there will not be any major changes to the plan as it very much follows the objectives of the management plan for the larger Mai Po and Inner Deep Bay Ramsar Site.
If the endorsement process goes smoothly, there will be changes to the way in which the reserve will be managed in the coming years. For example, the reserve will be managed as large, discreet blocks of habitat. For example, gei wai 8 (in front of the Tower Hide), 10 and 11 will be managed to conserve the reedbed habitat, gei wai 12, to 14 (by the Education Centre) managed to conserve the mangrove habitat, and much of the southern gei wai (from 20 to 24), managed as a ．freshwater habitat・. In addition, there will be much more careful control of the water levels on the ．scrape・ areas in front of the Tower Hide and the hide by gei wai 11 where many waders are seen during the spring northward migration. A tighter programme of water level control will be achieved by taking these ponds out of commercial gei wai shrimp production and instead, the water levels will be managed for roosting waterbirds. Demonstration gei wai shrimp farming will continue in gei wai 12 to 14.
fish stocking
Due to the reports from fishermen in the past about wintering Cormorants taking fish from their ponds, an integrated plan to resolve the problem was agreed by the AFD, the local fishermen・s association and WWF Hong Kong. Under this plan, WWF Hong Kong will buy trash fish (mainly Tilapia) from the local fishermen to stock in one of the Mai Po gei wai, so that this pond would then act as an alternative feeding area for these birds. In the past, gei wai 3 at the northern part of the reserve has been used for this work, but under the Mai Po Management Plan, this gei wai is part of a block of ponds which are supposed to be managed for Black-faced Spoonbills, and not for Cormorants.
As a result, we will still buy trash fish from the fishermen this winter but will carry out a trial to stock the trash fish in gei wai 8 instead of gei wai 3. This is because past experience has shown that the sudden abundance of fish will attract many birds into that pond to feed, such as herons and egrets, and of course Cormorants. With the Tower Hide overlooking gei wai 8, the potentially large number of birds that could be attracted into this pond will be quite a sight for students and visitors to the reserve who use this hide during their tour of the reserve.
Earth moving this winter
Earth moving will continue this winter in gei wai 24a, at the southern end of the reserve. It is expected that the work will start in October and continue until February next year. The aim is to turn gei wai 24 into another block of rain-fed ．freshwater・ ponds similar to gei wai 20 which was so good for waterfowl last winter (1998/99)[and has continued to attract intersting birds all through the year - ed].
Field trials for aquatic plants
Visitors to the southern part of Mai Po over the summer, may have seen a number of large netted cages set up by the side of gei wai 24b, with different plants growing inside. This is because of the International Wetland Park project at Tin Shui Wai, the Territory Development Department has set up a series of planting trials for freshwater plants to see which species are able to grow in the Deep Bay environment and thus, would be suitable for planting at the future wetland park.. The trials will continue until mid 2001.
| Mitigation in Action
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By Mike Kilburn
This is a new section of Conservation News which will highlight instances where mitigation of major developments will be reviewed to highlight both positive and negative cases. In this issue woefully weak mitigation measures at the Route 3 Au Tau intersection are introduced.
Route 3 refers particularly to the huge road interchange at Au Tau to the northwest of Yuen Long built by the Highways Department. The Reinstatement and Maintenance Plan for Fish Ponds at Au Tau has not been a success. Adding insult to the injury which deemed a mitigation area of 1.84 hectares sufficient for the permanent loss of almost 17 hectares of fishponds, the mitigation ponds, totalling 1.4 hectares were surveyed 7 times over a four month period and a total of just 26 birds of 11 species were recorded.
This sad figure comes of little surprise when one considers that the mitigating ponds are surrounded by the busy highways of the new intersection. Worse still, one pond has no coverage except gravel chips with high levels of zinc contamination - hardly ideal habitat for wetland birds. Planting bamboos inside the triangle of the intersection to replace the egretry lost at Tung Shing Lei was another nice touch. No egrets are currently breeding there.
| Seabirds on Pedro Blanco
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Does anyone have any records of which seabirds are using the island of Pedro Blanco in waters East of Hong Kong as a breeding site? Photos of bird remains have been seen, but there are no concrete records of birds from that location. Please pass any records to the Recorder, Geoff Carey at gjc@netvigator.com
| Japan-US Joint Dunlin Migration Project
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In August 1999, Japanese and US government officials colour flagged 700 Dunlin on their breeding grounds at North Slope Alaska. The Japan-US Joint Dunlin Migration Project is a concrete step to monitor the decline in wintering Dunlin in Japan. This project aims at studying migratory paths by attaching colour flags to Dunlin in Alaska, where they breed, and to collect re-sighting information in wintering grounds in Japan, Korea, China and other areas.
There are a several subspecies or population of the Dunlin that winter in East Asia. A population that breeds in North Slope, Calidris alpina arcticola, has been selected in the initial phase of the study. This population winters in Japan and other parts of East Asia. It is found on tidal flats and inland wetlands such as rivers. The birds are marked as follows:
Right tarsus: light blue ring/metal ring
Left tibia: Dark green flag
In September 1979, over 1,200 Dunlin were colour marked with picric acid at the Yukon Delta in Alaska. Over that winter there was a recovery in Kochi, Japan and a further 11 observations. There was also a sighting in Taiwan. Please forward any sightings to:
Minoru Kashiwagi, Tokyo Office,
Japan Wetlands Action Network
Tel/Fax: +81-42-583-6365
E-mail: TAE04312@niftyserve.or.jp
| Colour-ringed Eastern Curlews
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Six Eastern Curlews, four adults and four juveniles, were banded this summer in the Arkhara River basin of the Arkharinskaya lowland in Siberia. The following ring combinations were used:
Left tarsus: metal ring,
Right tibia: plastic band (red for adults, orange for juveniles)
Any sightings should be reported to Alexey Antonov by email at hingan@amur.ru
[Finding and noting colour-ringed birds adds a new dimension to searching through flocks of gulls and waders, particularly at high tide roosts and at the Mai Po boardwalk. In addition to sending the record to the appropriate researcher, members are requested to submit the record to HKBWS either via the Excel spreadsheet which is downloadable from the Society website, or on a standard record -ed.]
| China Conservation News
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Black-faced Spoonbill Colony Discovered in China
by Simba Chan
Exciting news to come from the ongoing satellite tracking of Black-faced Spoonbills wintering in Hong Kong and Taiwan is the discovery of a new breeding ground and the first breeding record of the species in China. The breeding site is on Changshan Island, on the south-eastern coast of Liaoning Province.
In mid-June 1999, Prof. Ding Wenning of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) visited the island and found 3 pairs of Black-faced Spoonbills. Prof. Ding Wenning (who also discovered the large wintering flock of Siberian Cranes at Poyang Lake in 1980) and Dr. Ding Changqing of CAS returned to the island in mid-July and found one nest with 3 chicks. However, two other nests had been disturbed by egg collectors (fishermen who collect eggs for food) and the birds were incubating a second brood. The island is also significant as a breeding ground for Chinese Egrets.
Other information discovered during this year・s successful satellite tracking is summarised as follows. Most of the birds (7 out of 12) returned to the western coast of the Demilitarized Zone of the Korean Peninsula.
It is a little surprising to find birds wintering in the two major wintering grounds (Mai Po Marshes and Inner Deep Bay in Hong Kong, Tsangwen Estuary in Taiwan) from the same breeding ground. Two birds captured in Hong Kong stayed at the northern edge of Yancheng Nature Reserve in Jiangsu Province PRC. We lost track of two other Hong Kong birds. One Taiwan bird (a young bird) is still in Taiwan.
Tracking of Black-faced Spoonbills this year reveals the major migratory route along the eastern coast of China, and some important stop-over sites in Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.
White-eared Night Herons at Chebaling
From reports by J&J Holmes and Yu YatTung
On 24 August 1999 Chinese language TV in Hong Kong carried a news item about the discovery of a live specimen of a White-Eared Night Heron in Guangdong. Scenes were shown of the bird, apparently caught by a farmer, and handed over to officialdom, The location of the finding was not given, but the background looked like Che Ba Ling Nature Reserve in Northern Guangdong, perhaps best known as a site for Blyth's Kingfisher. The museum in Che Ba Ling has a stuffed specimen of this species, apparently taken in the reserve years ago.
The reserve was visited by Lee Kwok Shing, who confirmed the report but noted that the reserve staff had already released the White-eared Night Heron. They said the bird appeared healthy and flew off strongly when released.
Soon after another White-eared Night Heron was found nearby by reserve staff. Unfortunately this bird had an injured wing and is unlikely to be able to fly again. The bird is being kept in captivity and represents the second record of this critically endangered species, which is one of the ultimate target birds for avid China listers.
Sclaters Monal Seen in Yunnan
This spring two groups of Hong Kong-based birders visited the Gaoligongshan Mountains in western Yunnan in search of Sclater・s Monal in April and May this year. Both groups saw the birds on Er Nao Zi Mountain between 3,400 and 3,600 metres. These are the first sightings by overseas birders in China in recent times, and included calling and displaying males in April and a female with chicks in May. The birds were present above the tree line in low bamboo thickets.
Sclater・s Monal is very poorly known in China, although preliminary research was carried out on the birds in the Gaoligongshan Mountains in 1998 by Shi Cao-chun of the Gaoligongshan Natural Reserve Bureau.
| Past Conservation News |
