The following is an excerpt from a recent e-mail from one of the hardest working and productive NGOS I know...The Hong Kong Bird Watching Society. It defies belief, that with so much alternative land to develop, the govt wants to push ahead and destroy what remains of our precious natural environment. Technopole? bah phooohey....
From HKBWS:
The Development Bureau recently proposed a new plan for San Tin Technopole, which showed an increase in scale to cover over 150 hectares of Wetland Conservation Area and nearly 100 hectares of Wetland Buffer Area, and to fill nearly 90 hectares of wetlands.
Our researchers recorded 78 individuals of the globally Endangered Black-faced Spoonbills in these fishponds. This number accounts for nearly 30% of the total population in the Deep Bay area and more than 1% of the global population. When a wetland supports over 1% of a wetland bird species, it is basically qualified to be designated as an internationally important wetland under the Ramsar Convention.
The Hong Kong Bird Watching Society is compiling bird records in the affected Wetland Conservation Area and sincerely invites everyone to submit your bird records in the San Tin and Sam Po Shue area. We will use this information in our submission and hope that the government would revise the development plan to protect the important wetlands, during a two-month public consultation expected to be started in early June.