THE NATURAL HISTORY OF HONG KONG

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/15/TRGOHGLO2M1.DTL

Wet and wild fringe tames urban heart

Hong Kong's high-rises crown marshland parks

David Armstrong, Chronicle Staff Writer

 

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Hong Kong -- I peer through the softly sliding window in bird-watching

hole No. 7, as a lanky egret wades through shallow, briny water. For a

long moment, all is silent. Then, suddenly, a disturbance causes the

egret to look up, unfold his wings and fly away into a landscape of

mountains and clouds turned pink by the sunset in a pearl-gray sky.

 

This bucolic setting looks and feels like a traditional Chinese

landscape painting: tranquil, rural, composed. But that's deceptive. I

am in a rustic wood and corrugated metal, bird-watching post tucked

away in the Mai Po Nature Preserve, a short drive from the Chinese

border city of Shenzhen and the high-rise-coated hills of central Hong

Kong.

 

Hong Kong, home to 7 million people, is, of course, better-known for

manmade artifice than the natural world, more for clamorousness than

serenity. Yet, this city is fringed by largely undeveloped land.

Indeed, 40 percent of greater Hong Kong is parkland, much of it

located in the rugged New Territories that border mainland China.

Swatches of these areas teem with bird life and are festooned with

tropical flowers and trees: heavily veined, gnarled banyans; thick,

green mangroves.

 

After years of fast-forward development -- and the environmental

devastation that goes with it -- Hong Kong is increasingly embracing

this natural bounty, offering places of refuge from stressful city

living and frantic shopping. My hushed bird-watching post in the Mai

Po Marshes is in the middle of a splendid nature reserve that has been

a favorite of birders for decades. And this spring, Hong Kong plans to

open another natural attraction: the Hong Kong Wetland Park, to

showcase the waterfowl and aquatic life of East Asia.

 

Hong Kong sits on a prime flyway for migrating birds, some from as far

away as Siberia and Australia. During peak spring and fall migrations,

tens of thousands of shorebirds flock here. At the Mai Po Marshes,

they feast on shrimp and small fish for their long journey up and down

the east coast of Asia. A similar swarm is expected to soon discover

the Wetland Park.

 

" Hong Kong is a refueling station, " explains Dr. Jackie Yip, an

ecologist for the Hong Kong government, as she shows me around Mai Po

and the Wetland Park-to-be. " The habitat of fish ponds and mangroves

is ideal for birds. "

 

An urban oasis

 

Looking around Mai Po, I can see what she means. The trees are black

with roosting birds, and wading avians like egrets and kingfishers

make their way through brackish waters, eyes downcast in search of

salty morsels.

 

This 3,500-acre magnet for wildlife is managed by Hong Kong government

scientists and the World Wide Fund for Nature. The organization runs

Mai Po on a day-to-day basis and issues entry-permits (booked in

advance) to the marshes' 40,000 annual visitors.

 

At Mai Po, elevated boardwalks and earthen walkways for visitors

crisscross otherwise open water, snaking across mudflats and through

bunched reeds and stands of trees. Parts of the landscape are pocked

with commercial shrimp ponds (gei wai in Chinese). After the shrimp

harvest, local farmers inside the reserve drain these ponds, providing

a squiggly banquet for birds that dine on noncommercial fish species

on the muddy bottoms. Great egrets, gray herons and great cormorants

are frequent diners, and perhaps a quarter of the world's endangered

black-faced spoonbills come here to feed.

 

Mai Po is reached via an unprepossessing, two-lane road lined with

sometimes-ruined domiciles and the occasional small farm. Inside the

refuge, green papayas grow in thick bunches on trees alongside a

single-lane road that rims the marshes. At times, the interior road

pushes up against a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and video

surveillance cameras. This is the border with China. In the middle

distance, through the fence, you can see the march of the dominos on

the Chinese side: the pale high-rises of Shenzhen.

 

But while the urban environment is certainly visible, it seldom

seriously intrudes on the wildlife of the marshes. Nor do the

reserve's eager human visitors impose themselves on the place.

Visitors to Mai Po are quiet and careful, peering through binoculars

at shy wildlife and silently squeezing off keepsake photographs. The

skittish birds, which stay far removed from people, are closely

monitored for avian flu, which has killed about 70 people in Asia

since 2003; so far, according to Dr. Yip, no sick wild birds have been

found at Mai Po.

 

In the coming months, Mai Po will acquire a sparkling new neighbor in

the nearby Hong Kong Wetland Park. The new park, still acquiring its

finishing touches, is designed to host 500,000 visitors a year.

 

More room for birds

 

The Hong Kong Wetland Park covers 150 acres on the edge of Mai Po

Inner Deep Bay. It was created at a cost of $65 million on the edge of

a new town where developers have built dozens of apartment buildings.

The Wetland Park is sleeker and more manicured than the Mai Po

Marshes, but the high-rise homesteads creep much closer to the park.

As Dr. Yip walks me around, I hear recorded music drifting from the

apartments and glimpse bright-red kites skittering through the air

just outside the park's boundary.

 

But then, that's part of the point. The Wetland Park is designed to

bring nature to a densely populated place. Parts of Hong Kong are home

to 15,000 people per square mile -- the highest concentration on

Earth. They don't see a lot of nature.

 

" We want people to get an idea of how amazing wetlands are, how useful

they are, " Dr. Yip says. Wetlands filter environmental toxins, form

buffer zones in storms, and provide cover and food for fish, migrating

and resident birds, small mammals and a dazzling variety of insects.

 

The park showcases all of these. Interpretive galleries explain what

wetlands are, and why they are endangered by climate change and

overdevelopment. A 30,000- square-foot visitors' center blends almost

imperceptibly into the park's landscape and has a roof topped with

grass. The grass helps to cool the building during Hong Kong's hot,

muggy summers.

 

Out of doors, an elevated wood-plank walkway meanders across the water

and through the trees, so that people can get out among the natural

attractions. Unlike Mai Po, where tour guides accompany visitors,

walks at the Wetland Park are self-guided. Walkways thread through

areas planted to attract specific insects and birds: here is an area

for butterflies, there's an area for dragonflies. A floating boardwalk

rises and falls with the tides among the mangroves.

 

At the end of our walk, we climb a flight of stairs inside a newly

built wooden tower. Softly, softly, we open shutters and peer out

though binoculars at a wondrous sight: a huge gathering of gray

herons, several hundred yards off. Pointy-beaked, black-crested,

covered with black and gray feathers, the herons wade and peck, wade

and peck, then stop stock-still. All is silent. I have stepped into a

traditional Chinese landscape painting, in a city of 7 million.