Through a tunnel, you enter another world, there is no restlessness of various cities, only birds singing insects, grass dancing and flying, even the air is sweet, both quiet and lively. This is not Alice's rabbit hole, but the Hong Kong Wetland Park, a delicate and fresh place in the cement forest. In fact, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan attach great importance to environmental protection, but also set up a lot of natural ecological conservation areas, below, let us go to these conservation areas together to see, what are worth learning from the ecological conservation methods.
Hong Kong: Urban planning goes hand in hand with conservation
Hong Kong Wetland Park. (Image from the Internet)
Hong Kong is home to a vast, undeveloped and natural landscape that encompasses a wide variety of ecological environments, nurturing a wide variety of hong Kong native plants and providing a habitat for Hong Kong's native and migrating wildlife. Covering an area of 1,104 square kilometres, Hong Kong has over 500 square kilometres classified as a "Protected Area", including country parks, special areas and nature conservation areas.
Hong Kong set up conservation areas at the beginning of urban planning and design to avoid projects damaging the ecological environment and affecting the quality of life of the public. The Hong Kong Wetland Park in Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong, is one of the most representative ecological conservation bases planned after the establishment of the SAR. It is an ecological environment of artificial and natural wetlands that provides a habitat for wildlife and is ideal for public education.
In the 1990s, due to the development of tin shui Wai New Town, part of the original wetland was filled in, and the wetland park was a "compensatory" wetland. At present, there are more than 560 species of birds in Hong Kong, of which more than 260 species can be found in the wetland park, which is worthy of being a "bird paradise". It also includes species that are closely related to wetlands, such as dragonflies, amphibians and reptiles.
Sharing the same wetland as the wetland park, the Mai Po Nature Reserve is internationally recognized as an important habitat and transit point for migratory birds, attracting more than 390 species of migratory birds in spring and autumn each year, including the endangered black-faced spoonbill, spoon-billed sandpiper and black-billed gull.
Macao: Ecological reserve managed by division
Black-faced spoonbills that come to Australia for the winter roost in the Cotai City Ecological Reserve. (Photo from the website of the Information Bureau of the Macao SAR Government)
Macau is located at the southern tip of the Pearl River Delta, on the west side of the Pearl River estuary, once a small island at the southern tip of Xiangshan County, hanging alone on the sea. Later, due to the sediment deposition of the Xijiang River, lulian islands were gradually formed. The accumulation of a large amount of sediment brought by the Xijiang River has formed many tidal flats and wetlands around Macao, and these areas have become more and more protected as the "lungs" of nature.
The Cotai City Ecological Reserve is the first ecological reserve in Macau, built in the Cotai Reclamation Area, located near the Lotus Bridge of Cotai, covering an area of about 55 hectares and divided into a limited open management area and an open management area.
The limited open area is located close to the northwest of the Lotus Bridge, covering an area of about 15 hectares, and there are four bird watching platforms on its east and north banks, including grass beaches, reeds and woods. Located on the west bank of the Cotai Reclamation Area, the open management area covers an area of about 40 hectares and contains three artificial islets with five species of mangrove plants distributed on the mudflat, where birds like to feed.
The Cotai City Ecological Reserve project was completed at the end of 2003 and mid-2004 respectively, and the consultant company was entrusted with the management and maintenance, and systematically collected the benthic organisms, plants, birds, water quality and surrounding environmental data in the area.
Taiwan: Opening up a "special road" for animal protection
The motorcycle driver made an emergency stop to make way for the land crabs. (Photo from Taiwan's Lianhe Pao)
In terms of natural ecological conservation, Taiwan has experienced a process from plundering and destruction to restoration and conservation. In this process, many effective natural ecological conservation practices have been explored, and the natural ecological conservation area is one of them.
Hengchun Peninsula is the most abundant natural resources in the southern tip of Taiwan, among which the Banana Bay Conservation Area, which is mainly based on the conservation of coastal forests, has a pristine and rich coastal forest like the movie "The Lord of the Rings".
The coastal tree species in the coastal forest form a dense shade that effectively blocks the direct sunlight, maintains the surface temperature and slows down the evaporation of surface water, forms a suitable micro-environment, and has enough dead wood and fallen fruit and other small animals in the soil as food, providing an excellent habitat for land crabs. Afforestation activities for the conservation of land crabs are often initiated on the slopes of the sea.
From August to October is the peak breeding period of Kenting land crabs in Taiwan, and the Kenting Park Management Office will generally set up a 1-kilometer-long "crab protection corridor" in Banana Bay and Sand Island section of The Taiwan 26 Highway to protect the eggs-hugging land crabs from going to the sea to breed. When the crab volunteers found multiple land crabs crossing the road, they immediately notified the traffic control staff to close the lane. At the same time, warning signs are set up in the sections where land crabs are frequently entered and exited, and when you see the sign "Beware of land crabs, slow down and slow down" in Kenting, it indicates that Banana Bay is in front of you.
The diversity of land crabs in the coastal forest of Banana Bay in Kenting is very high, up to 24 species in 5 families, which is an important habitat for fierce cylindrical crabs, small hidden crabs, central Warsaw crabs and other species, of which the ferocious cylindrical crabs are the largest group of Taiwanese land crabs. (Sun Nan comprehensive finishing)