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October 30, 2014

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Over 5,000 residents to make way for birds

THE city of Qiqihar in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province is going to relocate nearly 5,400 villagers from the Zhalong Nature Reserve to protect the area’s red-crowned cranes in a project that will cost more than 160 million yuan (US$26.14 million).

The nature reserve, 30 kilometers southeast of the city center, is the world’s largest base for the rare species and also a wetland paradise for white-naped cranes. An estimated 300 wild red-crowned cranes inhabit the reserve, accounting for one-fifth of the world’s total.

Along with environmental degradation due to the building of dams and dykes, the area’s 13 villages of about 5,400 farmers have become a threat to the cranes. The relocation project in China’s far northeast has been approved, and the first batch of residents will move by winter of next year.

“Wild red-crowned cranes are very sensitive to human activities. If they sense there are humans around within a distance of about 500 meters, they will at once run away,” Su Liying told the Oriental Morning Post.

Su is a crane scientist who has been based in the nature reserve to study the birds since the 1980s.

Spring is the breeding season for the red-crowned cranes, while it’s also a time for local farmers to fish and seed in the reserve. In addition, illegal wild hunts, poisoning and thefts of eggs are posing a great threat to the cranes.

“Human activities are ruining the ecological environment in the reserve. The species diversity is also destroyed,” Su said.

Villager Wang Futong recalled that during the 1970s there were more bird species in the reserve.

“The water surface was always covered with cranes and geese, which looked like a farmland densely inserted with rice plants,” he said.

Su confirms that the number of aquatic birds in the wetland has been dropping in recent years. According to her long-term study, bird populations are shrinking and will never recover to the level of 30 years ago.

“Today, some of the aquatic birds’ population quantities are less than one-tenth of the number back in the 1980s,” she said.

Villager Wang used to catch more than 500 kilograms of fish within one day, but now the catches are meager.

“There are now more fishing nets underwater, while the fish are fewer,” he said.

More importantly, human activities are harming the area’s water. The wetland’s water sources originate mainly from the upper reaches of the Wuyu’er and Shuangyang rivers, in addition to the flood recharges of the Nenjiang River every four to six years.

However, since a 300-million-cubic-meter dam was built in 1996 to control floods of the Shuangyang River, there has been no water running into the wetland.

Due to the ecological degradation, the Wuyu’er River flow has decreased by more than 50 percent, while floods have almost disappeared as a dyke was set up along the Nenjiang River.

“Less water comes from the upper reaches and there are no more flood recharges, which weakens the wetland’s ecological system,” Su said.

According to monitoring data, Zhalong wetland’s overall water has been reduced by two-thirds from the 1960s, causing the area’s lakes, canals and swamps to shrink.

Aquatic birds threatened

Wang Wenfeng, deputy director of Zhalong Natural Reserve, told the Oriental Morning Post that by the end of 2005 the core zone of the wetland had shrunk from 700 square kilometers to 130 square kilometers with withering waterweeds and drying-up reed ponds.

“These are all threatening the lives of cranes and other aquatic birds in the reserve,” Wang said.

In order to improve the wetland’s ecological environment, the provincial government of Heilongjiang has taken a series of measures since 2002. Water is recharged artificially from Nenjiang River to the wetland.

But the key to solving the problem is relocating the residents. “It’s the only way out to curb the environmental deterioration,” the director told the Xinhua news agency.

The Zhalong wetland’s core area currently has 13 villages with more than 1,500 families, totaling 5,396 people. The first 1,447 residents are to be relocated within the next several months, by the end of winter.

“But what am I going to do when I’m moving out?” asked Meng Xiangduo, 67, who has been living in Zhaokaitun Village in the wetland for 42 years.

Meng and his wife live in a 35-square-meter bungalow with simple furniture. They grow cabbage, chili, potatoes and corn around the house, and also raise pigs and poultry in the backyard.

The village is a narrow island, hidden in the deep of the wetland. It takes about an hour to get to the village by boat along zigzagging canals. There is no other transport to the island.

The fishing village with about 23 hectares of farmland that used to be rich in waterweeds had 68 families, or 239 people, during its heyday but today is left with only nine families of less than 20 residents.

Without electricity, medical facilities, post office or school, Zhaokaitun Village is withering more quickly than the other 12.

“We’ve heard of the relocation project for many years, but the question is what else we can do except fishing?” said villager Wu Xiaoyong.

Wu and his older brother, Wu Dagang, are among the few young people who stay on the island today. In the eyes of the Wu brothers, the village still has potential to be developed.

“I’m thinking of opening eco-farming tourism on the island,” Wu said.

But some villagers said the local government has already stopped investment to construct the village.




 

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