Beijingers are famous for loving birds. Every day, taking your own birds out for a walk is a compulsory course for many old Beijingers. In the writer's writing, they are called "birdmen", and the place of birds in their hearts can be seen. In recent years, many bird lovers have begun to shift their attention from "caged birds" to "jungle birds", and they are also regarded as a new generation of "birdmen".
Guo Geng: This photo is very special, in 1999, in the first bird watching competition in China, I spoke on stage as the only Chinese team (representative).
Guo Geng has been working with animals for nearly four decades, and in his words, animal protection is not only a profession, but also his career.
Guo Geng: What is a career and career? It's that I want to go to work, that's career. If it says I'll have to go to work tomorrow, it's a career.
Guo Geng: When I went to the field, the "croaking" in the distance was all called, and I saw that the field on the ground was full of birds called bean geese. I just took the telescope and swept it. Suddenly, it stopped moving, and I said it looked like the Great Bustard was here. Everyone turned the "muzzle" and looked there, and they saw that it was really a bustard.
The Eastern Great Bustard is a rare species that is extremely difficult to observe, and it is a national first-class protected animal, with less than 2,000 animals in the world, and is even considered to be the "giant panda of birds". But unlike giant pandas, birds migrate freely and even inadvertently appear around people.
In rapid urban development, humans crowd out the land, space and resources for wild animals and plants. In June this year, the report of the 13th Party Congress of Beijing Municipality proposed to "strengthen the management of nature reserves and build a capital of biodiversity". The city will build 20 natural belts in some conditional green parks to promote the transformation of planted forests into near-natural forests and reserve habitat space for wild animals. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, 120 biodiversity conservation communities will be built every year to create habitats for small animals.
Zhou Caixian: Because now that we have a base, according to our preliminary investigation, our species are about 6,000 species, how to protect it well, this is actually the next grand proposition of our landscaping department.
Without diverse ecosystems, complete biological chains and biological corridors, Beijing's current "green" may only be a short-term "green desert". Is it really possible for a megacity like Beijing, which is rapidly densely populated, to bring "green" to life and become a natural city again? In a bustling city, can the vision of "all things coexist" be realized?
"Counterproductive" ecological protection
Yi Jian and Ma Decheng are both members of the Beijing Sub-center Bird Love Association, and they call it the Great Bustard, a national first-class protected animal. In 2017, birdwatchers spotted the Great Bustard here, and since then, they spend nearly half of their time here every winter.
The Great Bustard feeds on grass seeds and grains, and this land in front of it, which is inconspicuous to people, is the perfect wintering hall for the Great Bustard. In fact, there are eight major migratory bird migration routes in the world, of which Beijing is on the "East Asia-Australia" migration route, and more than 300 kinds of migratory birds and travel birds migrate south or north every year, with more than one million people. After several years of continuous observation and recording, Yi Jian and Ma Decheng were pleased to find that this place has become a stable wintering ground for several great bustards, and in addition to a few old faces, the team is still growing, reaching a maximum of five last year.
Guo Geng: I think this is a model of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. The farmer should have planted the land, but the winter was deserted, and the birds came here to overwinter. The only thing you do is not to bother. A lesson I've learned over the decades is that the key to conservation is not to lock up animals, but to control people.
In order to better protect the Great Bustard, Ma Decheng and Yi Jian specially drafted a guide to the shooting behavior of the Great Bustard and openly recruited volunteers from the public.
Today, the team has grown to nearly 200 people. At this time of year, they will spontaneously schedule shifts, go to work at 8 a.m. and lay off at 5 p.m., silently helping the bustard solve various problems.
This year, Beijing launched a new initiative to "uncover the net and see the green", which not only prevents dust and realizes regional ecological functions under low maintenance conditions through simple greening to "beauty" of wasteland. This initiative, which was meant to improve the ecology, inadvertently changed the ecology. For their part, the Great Bustards, who have just adapted to and even relied on this wintering ground, now have to deal with this sudden change.
Lv Zhi: From the perspective of people, this place is messy, but why they have observed since 2015, there are 266 species of birds, including eight first-class protected animals, living here, the eyes of animals are different.
Lv Zhi is a professor at the School of Life Sciences and the Center for Ecological Studies at Peking University, and the founder of the Shanshui Nature Conservation Center. In her early years, she was mainly engaged in giant panda research and conservation, and some people called her "the closest person to wild giant pandas". The abundance of flora and fauna on the campus around her made her pay attention to the natural ecology of the city.
In 2008, in the context of the Green Olympics, Aosen Park abandoned the traditional design concept of "park for people" and put forward the construction standard of imitating natural mountains, in the same year, 530,000 nearly 100 kinds of trees, more than 80 kinds of shrubs and more than 100 kinds of ground cover plants, according to biodiversity composed of the natural forest system of Aosen, the green coverage rate of the park reached more than 95%. Among them, in order to purify the water quality of the park, more than 60,000 square meters of reeds were planted. Today, this wetland space has long become a paradise for animals.
Wang Jun: Our reeds are for the oriental big-tailed eagle and the crow, they like to move in this reed, it has to eat the insects in the reed stalks, it not only hides but also forages. And chickens and so on, will depend on this environment.
For many years, in order not to destroy the water quality of Orson by reeds and to prevent fire in winter, the park cut all the reeds every November. Wang Jun, who studied gardening, never realized that this reed had such a great effect on animals. In 2017, the research on biodiversity strategy in Beijing was launched. The Shanshui Nature Conservation Center suggested that Wang Jun could change the way the reeds were cut.
Tan Lingdi: Orson didn't cut the reeds less, because this is the water quality of its water body, but you can cut the reeds according to the rhythm of birds and insects breeding, for example, in the spring, before the bird breeding season, I cut all the reeds, so that when the birds come, they will not disturb it because you cut the reeds. There are also some dragonflies, maybe it has to use reeds to breed, you can leave it a few small pieces appropriately. In autumn and winter you need to cut reeds for fire prevention purposes, but some birds need to spend the winter in the reeds, so leave a few pieces for it in places where there is no risk of fire prevention, such as in the middle of the water.
In November this year, for the needs of winter fire prevention, the work of cutting reeds by Orson went ahead as scheduled. But birds wintering here don't have to worry about losing space. After listening to Shanshui's advice, Wang Jun decided to change the number of reeds cut from 1 to 3 times a year according to the habits of birds, and these changes also brought a different experience to herself.
Today, when we look around Beijing, we have the impression that the city full of reinforced concrete is covered in green. The windbreak and sand fixation project, which lasted for more than 60 years, has enabled Beijing to achieve the transformation from yellow to green. Two rounds of "million-mu afforestation" projects have brought Beijing's urban greening coverage rate to 49.29%. But how to make green "live" is an urgent problem for Beijing.
Zhou Caixian: There are two main meanings to live, one is that we have built a forest, and the amount is very large, but our forest is bare, as a complete ecosystem, it is not alive. On the other hand, after people enter the forest, we feel that they are at a loss to just walk, and people have not yet enjoyed the various benefits brought by the forest, so people cannot move when they go in.
In 2017, Beijing began to implement the second round of "million-mu afforestation", putting forward the afforestation policy of locality, longevity, stress resistance, food source and beauty, striving to improve stress tolerance through native tree species, and on this basis, provide more food for animals and restore biodiversity.
Zhou Caixian: Green, restore the ecosystem. In fact, in a region and an environment, to achieve the balance of the ecosystem, organisms must be diverse, the food chain must be perfect, the extinction of a species does not represent an individual, a chain is broken, resulting in an imbalance in your ecosystem.
Lv Zhi: The process of urbanization, from the perspective of the ecosystem, is a monolithic process, which becomes a cement forest. Man himself is a product of nature, and when he becomes strong, he gradually destroys the cornerstone of this life on which we depend, becoming more and more fragile and unstable, which is why we emphasize today to protect nature and protect biodiversity, because it has encountered a crisis and is actually unsustainable. In fact, nature can do it all over again, but humans cannot.
The Power of Nature: Seeing the "Hidden Value" of Living Things
Beijing has always been a metropolis rich in biodiversity. Many birds, amphibians, reptiles and plants can become their foothold, even if they are small, if they are in the right conditions, and live in close proximity to or mosaics of human settlements.
Lv Zhi: Beijing's biodiversity restoration potential is very large, but at the same time it is also very fragile. The so-called respect for nature and conforming to nature are easy to say, but it is actually quite difficult to do.
Located in the western suburbs of Beijing, the Jingxi Forest Farm has 170,000 mu of forest stretching over the mountains of western Beijing. It's late autumn in October, but you can still see patches of green. Pinus tabulosa is evergreen and is extremely common in artificial forests. It is already difficult for people to imagine that at the beginning of the founding of New China, there were also "barren mountains and bald mountains, and the wind was blowing." "After half a century of hard work, it is now green, but it has ushered in new problems.
An Eucalyptus: You look at it from the satellite, it's green, and when you go to the bottom of the woods, there's actually nothing, no bushes, no grass, it's bare, and we call this a "green desert."
The predecessor of Jingxi Forest Farm is the enterprise forest farm of Jingmei Group, its birth was originally used for coal mine roadway pits, and later with the development of technology and the adjustment of national policies, the forest farm became an ecological compensation for coal mining enterprises, and the specific era requirements determined that fast-growing tree species such as oil pine and larch are the best option, but due to the excessive density of the forest area and shading the sun, it is difficult for herbaceous plants and shrubs under the forest to grow, which also aggravates the single species.
Zhou Zunxiu: Pure forest is an unstable structure. Because it has no food chain cycle, there is no mutual species constraint and balance, resulting in the occurrence of pests and diseases, which is particularly easy to spread and spread.
In fact, both plantations and artificial turf that can be found everywhere in cities are undergoing a transformation from artificial to natural.
Once the South Gate Lawn, there will be no animals to stop. In order to maintain the evergreen, neat and beautiful lawn, every ten days from the end of June every year, it is necessary to carry out insecticide every ten days.
Wang Jun: This work is particularly stylized, I consciously sow a part of dandelion and purple flower dicing and turn it into a decorative lawn. When there is a certain proportion of other flower varieties, its disease is not easy to spread, and even the South Gate lawn, I don't take medicine once a year, the price is that it is not a pure cold season lawn, autumn will be yellow earlier, but I have always felt that in fact, this aesthetic is no problem, there must be four times a year in nature to change is right.
Lv Zhi: Why do we protect biodiversity? We all have this experience, the table can't stand on two legs, three legs can stand up, but if you accidentally cut off one leg it will fall, if there are ten legs and eight legs, it is safer. The more biodiversity, the more stable the functioning of the ecosystem.
For Jingxi Forest Farm, the restoration of biodiversity has been put on the agenda since the beginning of the takeover of this forest land, and some gratifying changes have been seen in just a few years. On the day we came, we were just in time to build the road, and in some places where the cement had not dried, we could also find the footprints of small animals.
In 2019, they joined hands with the Shanshui Nature Conservation Center to start an attempt to "open a forest window" to restore ecology by thinning to create sunlight and spatial conditions for understory vegetation growth. In their words, not all trees are called forests, and sometimes cutting down trees is more helpful than planting trees to restore forests to their natural and healthy state.
These seemingly insignificant saplings made Zhou Zunxiu and them happy, and as laymen, they may not understand what they mean for this ecosystem.
Zhou Zunxiu: For example, oaks, an indicator species of the top biome, many of the seedlings we have seen this year may be small seedlings, and maybe in 20 years, it can grow into such a large tree, and a stable ecological community has already been formed.
In the primeval forest, animal and plant microorganisms perform their respective roles in this environment, maintaining stability and harmony. For plants, they need the help of nature to pass seeds and seedlings to all corners of the forest, in other words, insects, birds are its constant dependence.
Guo Geng: Most people say that 520 means I love you, but [that day] is also International Bee Day. More than 1,000 of the more than 1,300 crops rely on bees to spread pollen. Without bees, our agriculture, animal husbandry, fruits, and vegetables would all be reduced and lost. Human beings often see direct value, product value, but they have more life support value, which is the value of biodiversity.
The Future of Cities: Staying in the Wild, Conservation, from the Perspective of Biology
In 2017, Beijing decided to plan to build a Wenyu River Park with an area of about 30 square kilometers in the northeast of the city's central area, at the junction of Chaoyang, Changping and Shunyi districts, and at the confluence of the Wenyu River and Qinghe Rivers.
Because the park is located at the junction of the three districts of the river and is also an important flood storage and detention area in Beijing, the planning and construction of Wenyu River Park was finally led by the Beijing Municipal Water Bureau, and the Beijing Wenyu River Park Coordination Group was established in 2019.
Li Wenyu: Actually, at the beginning, it was mainly for flood control, but it is very large, and it is not necessary to build flood storage and detention areas for all 30 square kilometers. We have estimated that there are about millions of residents in the surrounding area, in fact, it is also to provide these citizens with a large space to experience ecological nature.
The first phase of the Wenyu River project was officially opened to the public in September 2020. Immediately, it quickly became the best choice for surrounding residents to go green and camp. While meeting human needs, the park is full of reed wetlands, no cement-hardened tidal flats, no enclosed water corridors along the river, and spatial planning with shrubs and grasses in mind, all of which are designed with wildlife in mind.
"Habitat" means the ecological geography of biological life. This is a word that is repeatedly mentioned in the design and planning of Wenyu River Park. In the view of garden designer Wang Xian, the area of 30 square kilometers has far exceeded the scale of the park, what should be the design and construction of Wenyu River Park? This is a question he has been haunting with.
Wang Xian: Wenyu River is neither a pure urban construction area nor a (similar) Sanjiangyuan Biological Reserve, and how we define its priority in this middle area, there was a lot of debate about whether to consider people or animals.
Under the premise of being ecological, Beijing decided to adopt the concept of "staying in the wild" proposed by Professor Lv Zhi. At present, "staying wild" has become one of the basic requirements of Beijing's landscaping management.
Lv Zhi: The so-called "staying wild" is to let it grow by itself, stop cutting it, manage it, plant it again, let it evolve on its own, and let nature do natural things. Of course, in this process, it is okay for people to help create a natural scene, but only if we understand what nature looks like, what these creatures need, what they need is grass, not trees, what they need is wetlands, or mudflats.
In the final design of Wenyu River Park, we see the spatial pattern of the natural zone of one heart, three cores and four veins, and the "stay wild" area of the entire park occupies 30% of the total area of the park, providing a habitat for various creatures to adapt to it.
Nowadays, Beijing's native plants are increasingly becoming the first choice for landscaping workers. Since 2020, Beijing has continued to carry out background surveys on biodiversity, and biologists have traveled all over the mountains to learn about the latest trends. According to data from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape Architecture, 2,088 species of vascular plants have been recorded in Beijing, including 80 species of plants under national and Beijing key protection. In addition, there are nearly 600 species of terrestrial vertebrate wildlife that inhabit the cities where we live.
According to the plan, Beijing will build 120 biodiversity conservation communities in parks, campuses, communities and other places every year to create habitats for small animals. A series of facilities for small animals such as insect dens, hedgehog houses, and earthworm towers have appeared around people.
Xia Fang: In the past, we used to do greening to be green, but then it became not only green, but also beautiful, now we make it come alive, and the diversity of species makes it more and richer. Biodiversity conservation can be in all aspects, I want to achieve such a goal in a large park, then I achieve a different goal in a small community, in fact, it is more to enhance people's awareness of protection.
Director Xia told us that there is a persimmon tree in the community, and whenever the harvest season, when the property reminds the owner to come and collect the fruit, the owner said, let the fruits stay on the tree, they were originally reserved for birds.
The bird building in Aosen Park is where Wang Jun comes every morning to inspect the park, and the more than 700 rooms in the bird building have an occupancy rate of more than 80%.
Wang Jun: When Aosen was built, its design concept was still relatively advanced, and the urban ecological park more or less considered birds, and this near-natural environment actually seems to be quite right now.
When the city develops rapidly, many children's childhood is also besieged by the "forest" of reinforced concrete, they may know the latest technology products, proficient in Qinqi calligraphy and painting, but they know little about the homes around them, the grass and trees around them. With the frequent "out of the loop" of outdoor sports in recent years, people are more and more aware that nature gives them more than just pleasure, but also more interesting knowledge to explore.
Source: CCTV News Client