Zhang Chunlan observes animals in the wild.
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Born in 1977, Zhang Chunlan spends half of her year working outdoors, and as an assistant researcher at the Guangdong Institute of Biological Resources, she has been investigating wildlife resources in Guangzhou for nearly 14 years.
Since September 2017, Zhang Chunlan has led 30 small partners of the institute to conduct many surveys on the wild terrestrial animal resources in Guangzhou. This is the second time after 10 years that they have investigated the wildlife of Guangzhou (plants are surveyed by the South China Botanical Garden).
"There are dozens more birds newly discovered in Guangzhou than 10 years ago, and the biodiversity of urban areas has also increased." Zhang Chunlan said that this is her intuitive feeling of several recent investigations. The team will conduct another final survey in May next year, with a full report of the second survey coming out by the end of next year.
Text/Guangzhou Daily all-media reporter Wu Wei
Photo/Courtesy of respondents
In 2004, after graduating from Peking University with a master's degree in zoology, Zhang Chunlan came to Guangzhou to work at the Guangdong Institute of Biological Resources next to Sun Yat-sen University, where she also received a doctorate from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Although Zhang Chunlan's hometown is in Liaoning, there is no discomfort in coming to nanguo, but she quickly fell in love with it: "Every time I see my classmates, I will 'Amway' them and tell them that Guangzhou is a very suitable city for life." ”
The former dirt road became a concrete road
More than a decade ago, Zhang Chunlan, who had just come to Guangzhou, received the first project to participate in, that is, to do the first background survey of wildlife resources in Guangzhou, and launched a full report in 2008. In the second background investigation, she has become the chief team leader of the team, leading 30 investigators to investigate every district in Guangzhou and re-investigate the local wildlife resources.
Zhang Chunlan said: "When I did the first investigation, I was particularly excited; now the second investigation, rationality and responsibility are obviously much more. ”
Zhang Chunlan and her friends have laid out more than 100 sample lines throughout Guangzhou, they observe the wild animals on each sample line to understand the local biological resources, each sample line has 3 to 5 kilometers, they observe and record along the way, and it takes about 2 hours to walk the whole journey. Zhang Chunlan introduced that in order to compare the changes in the past 10 years, the sample line is completely consistent with the first time, but on the basis of the first time, more than a dozen new sample lines have been added, "These new sample lines, mainly the newly built wetland parks in Guangzhou in the past 10 years, we need to understand the wild animals in these parks." ”
Since September 2017, Zhang Chunlan and her friends have done five surveys, the other four surveys were in December 2017, March 2018, June 2018 and November 2018, each survey is usually more than 20 days, and all sample lines in 11 districts in Guangzhou must be investigated. In the first survey last September, she was involved as a captain, and the team of 30 people was divided into four groups to investigate several districts separately. In an interview with reporters, she had just returned from Conghua research, "Our sample line is uniform cloth, and we have conducted so many surveys to understand the difference between wild animals in the four seasons of Guangzhou." ”
Zhang Chunlan said that the current huge data has not been summarized, and next May will do another survey, until the end of the year to report, but from the direct view of Zengcheng Dafengmen Forest Farm, Conghua Liuxi River Basin area, biodiversity performance is relatively good, medium-sized mammals and rare birds, snakes are distributed, and in Guangzhou city, Zhang Chunlan's intuitive feeling is that biodiversity has increased, and "the biggest feeling is that ten years ago, many of the sample lines we walked were dirt roads, and now they have become cement roads."
It's fun and dangerous
In Zhang Chunlan's eyes, field research is full of fun. In this research, her main task is to observe birds, in addition, the team also has special observation of large and medium-sized wild mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects, and people special photography.
Different types of wildlife are observed in different ways. For example, mammals such as wild boars in the jungle are usually lying out at night, it is difficult to observe directly, it is necessary to observe the feces of such animals, the team also placed a lot of infrared cameras in the jungle, convenient for night observation, at night, the team members who observe these nocturnal animals will also conduct night visits.
Zhang Chunlan's time to observe birds is mainly during the day, usually, her carry-on equipment will have two telescopes and a camera, when she arrives at the observation site, she will take out the telescope to look around the jungle, and immediately shoot after finding birds. This kind of observation often has a surprise, once, she and a colleague who observes insects in the sample line of the Conghua Mountains, the colleague is holding a net on the ground to observe the insects, but accidentally, the net beat hit a "meat ball", and after touching it twice, the "meat ball" woke up and flew away. "It's a nighthawk, it's all tan, it's all the same as the color of the ground, and when we touch it, it's resting, and oh my God, its protective color is so realistic." Although it was quite a long time, remembering the nighthawk, Zhang Chunlan was still amazed.
Zhang Chunlan usually spends half the year outdoors observing animals. In addition to undertaking two wildlife surveys in Guangzhou, she has observed almost every county and city in Guangdong, and in addition, she has left her footprints in the four valleys on the southern slope of Mount Everest and Nepal in Tibet, "In recent years, every June, we will go to the southern slope of Mount Everest to do background surveys of wild animals, many small partners have altitude sickness, but I did not have a particularly strong feeling when I went." ”
Zhang Chunlan said: "Now the team has 30 partners, only 3 girls, but I still like such a day, sitting in the office I can't sit still. In Guangzhou research, 10 years ago we also camped and lived in tents, and now we are becoming more and more urbanized, and we can stay in hotels anywhere. ”
Zhang Chunlan has also experienced danger. Once, when she was researching wildlife in the mountains of northern Guangdong, it was more than 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and the weather was gradually getting colder, so she and another friend took a look at the map and decided to take the nearest route. But unexpectedly, it was a very dangerous road, the mountain road was steep, they needed to climb up a distance, the little friend walked in front, suddenly stepped on a lot of stones, Walking behind Zhang Chunlan dodged, the stones just hit Zhang Chunlan's head, suddenly blood flowed, "We didn't walk to the main road until seven or eight o'clock in the evening, when the sky was completely dark, fortunately our car was waiting for us on the side of the road." Later, I didn't go to the hospital, just simply bandaged it. Speaking of that adventure, Zhang Chunlan is now very understated.
There are wild boars on Mount Hat Peak
Zhang Chunlan said that compared with the first survey, most of the wildlife species in Guangzhou have not changed much.
First of all, Guangzhou does not have large mammals such as south China tigers and lions, but in the mountainous areas of Conghua and Zengcheng, small and medium-sized mammals such as ocelots, spotted forest beavers, wild boars, and civets can still be found. "In the downtown area of Maofeng Mountain, there are also medium-sized mammals, such as wild boars. Of course, the most common ones in the survey are small mammals, such as squirrels. Zhang Chunlan said that the number of wild animals has decreased to a certain extent compared with 10 years ago, and when they once investigated the conghua sample road, they happened to encounter a bamboo forest that was shoveled down by an excavator because of road construction, and looked down, just something ran out of the bamboo forest, it turned out to be a spotted forest beaver, "The speed of urbanization in Guangzhou is too fast." ”
In addition, Zhang Chunlan also introduced that the reptiles in Guangzhou are widely distributed, and the poisonous snakes include cobras, king cobras, silver ring snakes, golden ring snakes, bamboo leaf greens, etc.; lizards such as color-changing tree lizards are also widely distributed.
In addition, Zhang Chunlan and her friends found that invasive species appeared in the wild in Guangzhou, "the most common are red fire ants and Brazilian turtles, walking on some of the same road, every few steps you can see a nest of red fire ants; there are also many Brazilian turtles, which should be caused by people's release." These creatures are called invasive species because they squeeze the living space of native species and reduce the diversity of native species. ”
Dozens of new species of birds have been discovered
Zhang Chunlan did not love birds when she was a master's student, and it was not until she came to Guangzhou that she developed a strong interest in birds. She told reporters that the entire coast of Guangdong Province is the migration route of migratory birds, so she can see many birds flying from the north along the coast.
What made Zhang Chunlan fall in love with bird research is a national second-level protected animal called the black-faced spoonbills. When Zhang Chunlan first saw this bird in Haifeng Nature Reserve, she was deeply attracted by its cute appearance. "There are more than 190 of them in Haifeng, and you can spot them at a glance on the beach, and this bird behaves the strangest, because its mouth is like a lute, and it seems to be particularly difficult to eat, and it needs to swing back and forth on the ground with its head down, sweeping around on the beach, which looks very funny." However, because of the gradual loss of habitat, it has become more and more endangered. ”
Since falling in love with bird research, Zhang Chunlan has maintained close ties with amateur bird watching organizations in Guangzhou. Zhang Chunlan told reporters that according to statistics 10 years ago, they found a total of more than 250 species of birds in Guangzhou, "of which there are black kites, black-winged kites, snake eagles, white birds, black-faced spoonbills, owls, etc." This time they found dozens of new species of birds compared with 10 years ago, and the newly discovered birds are light-footed willow warblers, scale-headed tree warblers, brown-faced warblers, etc., and some rhododendrons have made new discoveries.
Grass finches and buntings are reduced
Zhang Chunlan told reporters that most of these newly discovered birds were published by amateur bird watching organizations on the Internet or in WeChat groups, and later they were discovered. Most of the newly discovered birds belong to small birds, because it is not easy to observe, many were not found in the survey 10 years ago, they determined the species of birds according to the photos, "In fact, a similar inspection, can see 60% of the species is already very good, we and bird watching organizations often interact, to the general public to promote the professionalism of protecting birds, the members of these bird watching organizations have been very professional, and the enthusiasm for bird observation is very high, in the city of Baiyun Mountain, Maofeng Mountain and other parks, and even in the campus of CUHK, They all go to observe and photograph, so sometimes I ask them to come and investigate with us. ”
"Compared with 10 years ago, the bunting in Guangzhou has decreased a lot, and the bunting mainly feeds on the grain in the rice fields, which we can still see in Conghua in the past year, but with the acceleration of urbanization in recent years, the farmland in the Pearl River Delta has become less and less, so the number of this bird has become less and less." Zhang Chunlan said.
"In addition, the number of grass finches is intuitively less than 10 years ago." Zhang Chunlan said that in this investigation, she only observed the grass flower finches in the forest areas of Conghua and Zengcheng, "The grass flower finches have been listed as national protected animals." ”
After 14 years of wildlife surveys, Zhang Chunlan is still full of love for her work, and their research team often invites some volunteers to participate together, and many volunteers often say to her with emotion after participating in an activity: "Your work is really interesting." ”