Call it a contest between beauty — in the form of the dramatically elegant black-and-white Oriental Stork — and a beast — carbofuran, a highly toxic pesticide.
In China this month, hunters wielding the chemical that is banned in many places targeted the endangered bird, attempting to kill dozens — and partly succeeding, the Beijing News reported, in Chinese.
Chinese nature lovers are used to tales of the damage inflicted on the environment and wildlife here as the country pursues economic growth decade after decade at seemingly any cost. And people continue to eat wild animals, even rare species, in the belief that they are especially nutritious.
Even so, the story of what happened beginning on Nov. 11th in a wetland near Tianjin, on the Gulf of Bohai, has shocked many.
Every autumn hundreds of the large, graceful storks, which are listed as “endangered” on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, land in the Beidagang wetland reserve where they rest and feed for about two weeks. About 500 — between one-fifth and one-sixth of the world’s total — rested there this autumn, bird lovers at the reserve told Chinese media.
Then the birds, whose snowy bodies are fringed by black wing feathers that fan out like giant fingers, take off again, heading south. The reserve lies along their migration route from breeding grounds in eastern Siberia to inland China, where they pass the winter.
But this year, about 20 birds never took off again, killed by hunters laying down the “bird poison” known in Chinese as kebaiwei, the Beijing News reported in investigative stories this week. (Elsewhere, carbofuran is being used even to kill lions, as this report by CBS shows.)
The poison is also a problem in Britain, where the wildlife minister, Richard Benyon, was harshly criticized by opposition members of parliament last month for refusing to ban the substance, the daily The Independent reported.
Over the last ten days, at least two dozen birds were saved by quick action by bird watchers and rescuers like Mo Xunqiang, a student of environmental sciences at Tianjin’s Nankai University, the Beijing News reported. View footage, in Chinese, from the state TV broadcaster CCTV, of the saved birds released into the wild this week. Or watch this slideshow from Xinhua.
Shocked and angered, The Beijing News has begun a campaign to protect rare birds from attacks such as these, with a hotline for people to report crimes (+86-10-67106710).
“Don’t kill them, don’t eat them, don’t buy or sell them,” the News implored. “Let migratory birds fly, let them live and flourish. Each and every one of us can become a volunteer.”
The stork is a class one protected species in China and is culturally venerated here, figuring in one of the most famous poems of the Tang dynasty, Wang Zhihuan’s “Climbing White Stork Tower.”
The bird is also considered a national treasure in neighboring Japan, where it died out and was re-introduced into the wild from captivity.
But something even more important than culture was at work — money, and the still-large market for eating game.
Each of the birds, which stand around 1.2 meters, or almost four feet, with a wingspan of about 2.2 meters, fetches about 200 renminbi ($32) in local wild game restaurants, the Beijing News reported — not much, but clearly worth it to the hunters.
The newspaper quoted one hunter at the Beidagang reserve, whom it gave the alias of “Lin Long,” who said that using carbofuran to kill birds was so widespread that these days hunters greeted each other with the question: “Have you laid pesticide or not?” a variation of the traditional Chinese greeting: “Have you eaten or not?”
Storks aren’t the only targets, so are swans and ducks, the newspaper said.
For Chinese conservationists, it’s a horrifying tale.
Said Zhu Chunquan, China representative of the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature, in a telephone interview, “Please, spread the word — people must love birds, not eat them. Treasure birds, treasure migratory birds in the autumn. We have to get that message across.”
IHT Rendezvous: Endangered and Targeted: Fight to Save Oriental Stork Captivates China
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IHT Rendezvous: Endangered and Targeted: Fight to Save Oriental Stork Captivates China
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IHT Rendezvous: Endangered and Targeted: Fight to Save Oriental Stork Captivates China
