Biodiversity Diary a trip to Wulong — John MacKinnon

P A G E 2

B I O D I V E R S I T Y D I A R Y

Jurassic Park

Exploring Chishui

Red-billed magpie on Chinese fir

Blue rock-thrush gathers food for chicks

More than pollution in Chongqing Chongqing is a noisy dusty city where the humid climate and deep river setting hold smog and acid rain for days at a time. But Chongqing is large and outside the city roll range after range of hills, each more glorious than the last. In the far southeast corner of the municipality lies the county of Wulong and here the air is clean and the water clear. Here is a natural wonder land of fantastic limestone with deep collapsed sinkholes called ‘tiankang’, magnificent natural stone bridges, deep caves and grottos. Parts of Wulong are inscribed on UNESCO’s list of natural World Heritage Sites as units of the serial site called-South China Karst.

P A G E 3

The three hour drive from Chongqing town to Wulong County is scenic and splendid following deep gorges or climbing over rugged ridge crests. Brave new towns, huge bridges and highways remain drarfed by the scale of the landscape and the hills are a patchwork of bare rock, planted forests, secondary forest and farmlands. Mioa minority villages stand beside pretty terraces. It is planting time and men drive placid buffalos to plough the fields and girls and women hurt their backs permanently bent over to sort and plant the paddy seedlings. Birds are nesting and singing. The val-leys echo with the clear calls of the cuckoos and the shrieks of red-billed magpies.

Biodiversity Diary

ECBP Newsletter Supplements May 28-31, 2009

Female Russet Sparrow prepares to nest

P A G E 4

Wildlife among the farms and villages

The visit had been organized by local Environ-mental Protection Bureau and Dr. Zhang Yingyi of the ECBP Chongqing project. The team was completed by FFI consultant Evan Bowen-Jones, VAC project manager Muriel Vives, lo-cal biologists Profs. Yuan Xinzhong and Liu Hong and variously mayors and other officials of county and townships. One of the reasons for the trip was to see if ECBP could start a field monitoring of biodiversity in the county.

Prof. Yuan wanted us to explore the vegeta-tion at the bottom of a deep tiangkang but to get there we needed to go through a deep cave for more than 1 hour. With little ex-perience, poor torches and only one pa-thetic little rope between us, the team de-cided the descent was too dangerous so the treat of the first bio-exploration of that tiangkang remains for someone else !! We climbed instead to the rim of the tiang-kang and gazed down in awe to its hidden depths. On our way back to Wulong town we stopped to interview villagers and sample village life. There were huge cabbages growing in the fertile soil and many birds both varied and relatively tame. But we also learned that they use many chemicals.

B I O D I V E R S I T Y D I A R Y

Fern frond, Hes-

perid butterfly

and spot-necked

dove

Miao zhu farmland

P A G E 5

B I O D I V E R S I T Y D I A R Y

On the higher grasslands is the Lady Fairy mountain resort where visitors can enjoy horse riding, archery, tennis and skiing. Larger tour-

ist developments are being developed as a series of alpine villas and the borrowed name of ‘Evian’. One wonders who is in charge of the plan-ning. And who gave permission for the build-ing of a film set inside the main World Heri-tage site ?

Film set for Zhang Yimo !! Inside WH Site.

Deep gorges

dominate the

landscape. Male

plumbeous

redstart flashes

his red tail.

Deep Tiankang in natural vegetation remains unexplored

Lift allows tourists descent the tiankang

Magpie robin and male

Russet Sparrow

P A G E 6

It is the sheer scale

of the formations

that makes you

gasp.

The natural stone bridges The great tian kang and natural stone bridges are truly spectacular and all the better for being clothed in natural vegetation. But it is the sheer scale of them that makes one gasp. The arches are hundreds of metres high and the tourists that swarm beneath are completely dwarfed. A stream of clear water winds and surges down the valley. Forktails and plumbeous redstarts chase in-sects along among the rocks. Wagtails hunt along the bank and noisy Himalayan Whistling thrushes dive for cover into dark caves and crevices.

Cilren sell

wreaths of

wild flow-

ers, tourists

shout and

the walls

echo.

B I O D I V E R S I T Y D I A R Y

A T R I P T O W U L O N G

Giant water-boatman insects floated on the water surface and frogs tadpoles lurked in the stiller pools.

Yellow-throated bunting (Evan Bowen-Jones)

A vertical world P A G E 7 B I O D I V E R S I T Y D I A R Y

Nesting peregrine falcons chase and shriek in the sky, plants cling precariously to cliffs and everywhere water tumbles in long elegant falls and cascades.

With high rainfall and spray from

waterfalls, the forests are always green

and perching on vertical limestone walls

is pretty safe from human interference.

P A G E 8

Boating up Furong river Wulong hosts the last two families of black-headed monkeys in Chongqing and most northerly population world-wide, but to see these rare creatures we must make a boat trip up the Fu-rong river.

The scenery is spectacular but the water level is already raised by con-struction of a dam and the habitat of the monkeys has suffered some loss. Formerly there were several families.

Spotted in the

treetops high up

the cliff side—a

group of rare

black-headed leaf

monkeys.

B I O D I V E R S I T Y D I A R Y

Local villagers express their opinions

Natural bridges of

Wulong WH Site

Where are those monkeys ?

Planning to start biodiversity monitoring

Gorges, waterfalls and rare monkeys P A G E 9 B I O D I V E R S I T Y D I A R Y

Wild Camelia

EU-China Biodiversity Programme Add: Rm. 503, FECO Plaza, Huoyingfang Hutong, Xicheng District, Beijing. 100035, P.R. China Fax: (+8610) 8220 5421 Email: info@ecbp.cn