OPINION> Li Xing
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OPINION> Li Xing
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Protecting our planet for posterity
By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-23 07:46
A group of ecologists invited me and my husband to join them and their families for a barbecue on Saturday in a hilly hamlet called Chapeng, about 80 kilometers from our home near the Bird's Nest in Beijing. After enjoying a lot of food, we set out to see if we could spot some wildlife in the area. We walked single-file along a narrow, hilly trail lined with shrubs on both sides. Before long, we heard a loud 'kock-cack' cry. A bird lover immediately recognized the sound as coming from a ring-necked pheasant and said the bird was no more than a dozen meters away from us. We worked our way down to a dried-up creek, the usual place where pheasants are sighted, and heard the same cry again, this time from a place a little further away. Just as we were about to give up, there came a third cry, high above us. The bird lover scanned the area and cried out: "There it is!" Standing on a huge rock overlooking the valley, the bird looked stately with its face red and bare, its head iridescent green with a distinctive white ring around its neck. We took out our binoculars and took turns trying to get a closer look at it. When it was a 5-year-old girl's turn, she cried because she couldn't spot the bird. Then her mother helped her find the pheasant with the binoculars, and she was all smiles again. We also took a lot of pictures and learned how to fit the lens of our digital camera into the binoculars to get a better shot of the bird. But after the initial excitement, we felt sad, realizing how much damage we human beings have done to the area and its wildlife. In two kilometers of this mountainous valley, we saw very few trees more than 20 years old. And as far as we could tell, there was no wildlife, other than some birds and a few ring-necked pheasant. The one we saw standing on the rock was trying to mark his turf against an encroaching male enemy, but we could only hear the other's cry. We didn't even spot a squirrel. Worse, the ecology of the whole area had obviously been degraded by a lack of water for several years. Our map showed a bright blue reservoir just to the west of the village, but what we saw was a huge basin of dried-up dirt. We were told the reservoir used to be filled with water from the Miyun Reservoir, about 30 kilometers to the north. Now, after several years of drought caused by global warming, the Miyun Reservoir, the precious water resource for a city of at least 17 million people, no longer has water to spare. As biodiversity decreases, residents of Chapeng and other villages nearby also suffer. These days, they receive water only one hour a day, while they wait for the city to connect their village water pipes to the city system. They have begun to protect the area from further degradation; access is limited, and use is restricted to a few, small areas. There are signs that wildlife is returning, but it will be many years before the area recovers. As we observe Earth Day, we must take stock of the harm we've already done to areas like this mountainous valley in Beijing's suburbs, and take seriously the scientists' warnings about the threat of climate change. If we continue to ignore global warming, our grandchildren or great grandchildren may never see a ring-necked pheasant. E-mail: [email protected] |
