Anne Zhang zhangy49@gmail.com JONATHAN MARTINEZ, a bird lover from France, was saddened by the sight of hundreds of illegal bird-catcher nets during a December trip to the Leizhou Peninsula in southwestern Guangdong Province. It’s not the first time Martinez has found large amounts of such nets along the province’s coastal areas in the past two years. “I am convinced that illegal mist-netting, a method used by bird poachers, is one of the main reasons why many bird species are declining in Guangdong,” Martinez said in an exclusive interview with Shenzhen Daily. A bird lover Born in a small village about 120 kilometers south of Paris, the 33-year-old Martinez has been fascinated with birds for years. He remembers playing with a pet Jackdaw rescued by his parents when he was about 3 years old. His family says this might have been the origin of his love for birds. During his childhood, Martinez frequently visited a natural reserve near his parents’ home, where he would encounter experienced birdwatchers. “Since then I’ve been involved in bird watching and wildlife photography,” he said. Martinez used to be a professional photographer and he is now a designer and co-owner of two companies, with one headquartered in Hong Kong. The business has kept Martinez traveling between Shenzhen and France since 2003 with most of his time spent in Shenzhen. “When I’m not working, I usually watch birds,” Martinez said, adding that running his own business has given him a lot of free time to watch birds. During his stay in Shenzhen, Martinez joined the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society and has frequently visited Guangdong’s coastal areas to watch birds. Martinez is currently involved in a collaborative study on Swinhoe’s Plover, a subspecies of Kentish Plover, with the South China Institute of Endangered Animals in Guangzhou. Mist-netting Martinez has been thinking about touring the entire Leizhou Peninsula to watch and study birds for one and a half years. Birdwatchers know which places have the best habitat for birds, Martinez said. Despite the fact that the loss of habitats has contributed to the decline of the bird population in China, the Leizhou Peninsula still has a huge area of unspoiled mudflat, which should be a paradise for birds as they migrate in winter, he said. But he was disappointed and infuriated after the trip to the peninsula in December in search of bird species. During the 10-day trip, he visited nine places on the peninsula with Richard Lewthwaite, a birdwatcher from the United Kingdom. They saw a total of 460 mist nets, each about 25 meters in length, Martinez said. Waders usually feed on mudflat at a low tide and roost in nearby drained fishponds, saltpans, and paddy fields or on sea walls. “Bird poachers know that,” Martinez said. “So, often when we were looking for good roosting sites for waders, we also found a large number of mist nets.” He said 84 mist nets were found in front of a flock of 500 waders at a single place in Xinliao Village in the east of the Leizhou Peninsula. “Birds may well die within a week if they stay at that place,” Martinez said. Declining bird species In the early 1930s, a French ornithologist named Pierre Jabouille spent one and half years studying birds in Zhanjiang, a city in the northeast of the Leizhou Peninsula. He mentioned in a paper that Common Cranes and numerous Spoon-billed Sandpipers were spending the winter in the area and wild ducks were commonly seen there, Martinez said. But during his 10-day trip, Martinez spotted only 21 ducks of four species. “If you go to the Mangrove Nature Reserve in Shenzhen, you may see more ducks in one kilometer than the total number of ducks we saw along more than 1,000 kilometers of the coast in the Leizhou Peninsula,” he said. Martinez also searched for Collared Crow on the peninsula. It was also a common bird there in the 1930s, but Martinez failed to find any. Martinez finds some consolation in the fact that he spotted a few rare bird species during the December trip, such as a female Burmese Shrike and a Shikra, neither of which had been seen in the province since the 1950s. He also found four Spoonbilled Sandpipers, one of the most endangered bird species in the world, on the peninsula in December, 2012. But Martinez isn’t very optimistic about the future of the birds. “There’s a good chance that these birds will be captured by one of the hundreds of mist nets there,” he said. Call for protection Martinez has reported several cases of bird poaching and mist-netting to Guangdong Provincial Forestry Department with the help of the World Wild Life Fund’s Hong Kong office. The forestry officials took these reports seriously, Martinez said. “They searched for poachers and removed the mist nets,” he said. “But these are short-term actions that won’t solve the problems for good.” Illegal mist-netting has been a big industry in southwestern Guangdong Province because Cantonesses have developed an appetite for wild birds, believing in their medical benefits. Martinez added that such demand has pushed up the prices of wild birds in the black market and led to much poaching and mist-netting. A long-term plan is now badly needed, he said. And the first thing that should be done is patrolling the area on a regular basis to remove mist nets and prevent other illegal poaching activities. Martinez has worked with some non-governmental organizations and a few birdwatchers in China to form a group that fights illegal mist-netting in Guangdong. “We will patrol the most sensitive areas during critical seasons to locate illegal mist nets,” he said. The group is preparing to meet officials with the provincial forestry department to discuss various protection plans. Martinez also suggest local governments create a database of every place where illegal mist nets have been set up and patrol the places every week during the migration season. Besides, strict laws and education are also critical to the long-term protection of birds in the area, he said. | 