FLYING SQUAD
With drones and machetes, China’s green vigilantes combat bird poachers.
For much of the past year, Liu Yidan has patrolled the back roads of China in a black jeep, hunting for bird poachers. The former restauranteur is part of a growing and increasingly proactive network of vigilantes in China who monitor the countryside and animal markets to combat wildlife poaching, which is endangering the existence of some species.
They hack down nets, track poachers with drone-mounted cameras, and chase traffickers.
Their efforts peak in spring and autumn, when poachers are out in force as more than 50 million migratory birds fly through China.
“It’s impossible to cut them all down,” Liu said.
“While birds can fly around the world, when they come to China they often reach their end,” the 52-year-old told Reuters on the shores of Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake. Located in the southeast of the country, it attracts hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, including swans, geese and rare cranes.
Mist nets and packets of Carbofuran, a pesticide used to drug birds, were found by Reuters correspondents in what is a protected nature reserve.
The informal network attracts thousands of volunteers, reflecting growing public concern over environmental degradation and frustration at what they see as lax enforcement of environmental laws — although the State Forestry Administration says it operates a zero-tolerance policy.
Despite tighter controls over civil society in China under President Xi Jinping, some analysts say authorities are allowing green groups like Liu’s a relatively wide berth, part of what analysts call “collaborative governance” in areas of the country allowing NGOs room to address non-political issues.
China’s voracious demand for ivory, horns, bones, fins and scales is well documented alongside the impact that appetite has on animals like the African black rhinoceros, Sumatran tiger and Chinese pangolin.
Less known is how millions of birds are caught by poachers in China each year.
The world’s fourth-biggest country is a major transit point for birds flying thousands of kilometres from summer breeding grounds in the Northern Hemisphere to wintering areas in the south.
“This is a real bottleneck because on the migration routes ... most of these birds have to pass China,” said Johannes Kamp, a German biologist from the University of Munster who has studied the impact of hunting on birds in China.
Based on figures collated by thousands of activists, poachers trap an estimated 7-10 million wild birds each year.
Offenders can face stiff fines, more than 10 years in jail and have property confiscated. But there is little official public information on how the policy is enforced.
A review by Reuters of the administration’s WeChat social media posts since September 2017, however, found 36 specific mentions of bird poaching cases, with 84 people arrested and 123,000 birds seized in 13 provinces.
Li, a 42-year-old teacher, leads a group of activists in southern China and has been involved in high-speed car chases,
beaten by thugs and posed as a buyer to smoke out illegal traders.
“Once, a man came after me with a cleaver,” Li, who declined to give his full name out of fear for his safety, told Reuters during an all-night patrol. “It’s risky but if we don’t do anything, things would be a lot worse.”
Li’s van is loaded with surveillance gear, including a drone equipped with a digital camera and zoom lens. He said 20 volunteers gather intelligence on suspect deliveries by truck, plane and train, and pass the information to police. Their work has led to numerous arrests, he said.
As he drove, Li’s smartphone beeped frequently with messages from other activists giving licence plate numbers and GPS coordinates of trucks carrying suspicious cargoes.
Activists say the birds are sold through markets and breeding farms alongside legally raised animals, such as in the affluent southern province of Guangdong.
Li said activists estimate 20,000 birds are brought, on average, into Guangdong daily, adding up to more than 7 million annually.
In one case last October, Li’s team helped to uncover 18,000 birds in 16 plastic foam boxes, including 2,000 yellow-breasted buntings. They had been transported on a cargo flight to Shenzhen airport in Guangdong. Two men were subsequently jailed.
Huang Chunjiang, a government official overseeing the Ruineng market, one of the biggest in Guangdong, said
traders were permitted to sell hundreds of thousands of farm-reared birds and animals annually. But he said it is difficult to verify that all the animals had been raised domestically.
“The situation is worsening,” he admitted. “It is a headache for the government because in the market they will sell legal things, but behind the scenes, whether they do other things, no one can say for sure.”
The finch-like yellow-breasted bunting has been extensively hunted in China as a culinary delicacy. Once found in the millions from Japan to Scandinavia, experts say it could face extinction like the passenger pigeon of North America, once one of the world’s most abundant species.
Last year, the bunting was reclassified as critically endangered, one step short of extinction in the wild, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Other birds affected by poaching in China include the chestnut, rustic and little buntings. The endangered spoonbilled sandpiper and Nordmann’s greenshank are not targeted for food but are vulnerable to bird nets.
Activists say the challenge is daunting but they are encouraged by more volunteers coming forward.
One newcomer, 26-year-old Yue Hua from Ganzhou, gave up a pharmaceutical career to become a full-time activist.
“After witnessing the environment of my hometown worsen due to mining, I wanted to do something,” he said. “I hope man and nature can co-exist harmoniously. That’s my dream.”
While birds can fly around the world, when they come to China they often reach their end LIU YIDAN Anti-poaching activist