It has a Facebook page, two books and its own brand of rice. A Siberian crane that landed in Taiwan after getting sidetracked on its migratory route more than a year ago even made international headlines when it was found wandering around outside an MRT station.
However, to conservationists, the crane is more than just a flash-in-the-pan media star. It is a godsend in their push for environmentally friendly farming as Taiwan’s birds suffer at the hands of development and pollution.
Taiwan is a mid-point pit stop on one of the world’s eight major migratory routes and a wintering ground for numerous waterbirds from Siberia, China, Japan and the Korean Peninsula on their way further south. However, in some areas of the nation waterbird numbers are down due to the destruction of habitats.
Photo: Lin Hsin-han, Taipei Times
There had never been any reported sightings of the rare white crane in Taiwan until December 2014 when the crane first arrived in the wetlands. It hit the headlines again last winter when it was found wandering around near Songshan MRT Station and was returned to New Taipei City’s Jinshan District (金山).
The Siberian crane is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “red list” of critically endangered species with an estimated population of less than 4,000.
“I didn’t expect the crane to stay. I thought it would fly away very soon,” said farmer Huang Cheng-chun (黃正俊), whose rice and lotus field was nicknamed “little crane base” when the bird took residence there. “When I work, the crane follows me around. It’s like a friend to me. It’s been helpful by eating a lot of apple snails in the field.”
As the crane helped rid their fields of pests, more farmers in the area agreed to go green to protect the bird’s health, a boost for ecologists, who had until then been struggling to persuade them to stop using pesticides, rat poison and herbicide.
Last year, preorders for “Jin Ho rice” — a composite of Jinshan and ho (crane) — were sold out months before the harvest. The eco-friendly farming area in Jinshan has now expanded from 3.5 to 10 hectares.
“It’s inevitable that the bird will leave,” Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation director Liao Jen-hui (廖仁慧) said. “We hope that by the time it’s gone, eco-friendly farming and the Jin Ho rice brand will be well established.”
Thanks to safer farming methods, the Cingshuei Wetlands (清水溼地) in Jinshan now has an abundance of food for birds and more migratory flocks stop by, including the black kite, rarely seen there previously, the foundation said.
However, elsewhere in Taiwan, habitat destruction caused by industrial development and pollution is taking its toll.
While the number of endangered black-faced spoonbills hit a record total of 2,060 in January, only 14 were seen in Yilan County, half the number sighted in 2014, the Chinese Wild Bird Federation said.
The decrease is likely linked to wetlands being converted into bed-and-breakfasts and aquaculture ponds, federation president Tsai Shih-peng (蔡世鵬) said.
In Changhua County, the number of far eastern curlew dropped from about 3,000 in 1993 to 600 in recent years after a huge industrial park was set up on the coast, he said.
“There have been many cases of wetlands being filled up for economic and industrial projects that damaged the habitat, especially smaller plots that attracted less attention,” Taipei’s Guandu Nature Park director Jeff Yeh said.
Guandu Wetlands, (關渡溼地), a major wintering ground for waterbirds in northern Taiwan, was saved from being turned into a stadium in 1996 after lobbying from civic groups to protect the area.
There are also other threats, especially with the trend of posting image of birds on social media, Tsai said.
Some birdwatchers use food to lure birds out and then throw stones if they are not a rare kind, and people have also been seen trimming trees to expose bird nests, removing chicks from nests or chasing birds in wetlands in order to snap better shots, Tsai said.
In one shocking case, a Japanese bush warbler, a migratory bird found in Taiwan in the winter, died after swallowing a pin believed to be used by birdwatchers to keep a worm in place so they could photograph it eating.
“These people are not interested in ornithology or conservation. They just want to take more photographs of birds than their peers and get more ‘likes’ on Facebook for vanity,” Tsai said.
Besides protecting the wetlands, promoting public awareness of conservation is a major task for the Guandu Nature Park, which operates weekend birdwatching activities, as well as school field trips and guided tours of the wetland, Yeh said.
“Having one more ally is better than having one more enemy. When one more person acknowledges our conservation concept, even if it’s just not to litter, it will have some direct impact,” Yeh said.
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