From China Daily | twitter.com/#!/LearnFromNature
Around 2 tons of fish and corn will be airdropped to a 133-square-kilometer reserve near drought-hit Poyang Lake, said Zhao Jinsheng, director of the food and resources office of the JiangxiPoyang Lake National Nature Reserve Authority.
“If many birds turn out to eat the dropped food, we will arrange the next round of airdrops afterSpring Festival,” Zhao said, adding that a total of 25 tons of food has been prepared, including 10tons of fish, 10 tons of grain and 5 tons of corn. Spring Festival falls on Jan 23.
Zeng Ming, Yangtze program manager at the World Wildlife Fund (China), said it is good to seeauthorities are working hard to protect birds.
Poyang Lake is connected to the Yangtze River, the country’s longest river, and provides a habitatfor half a million migratory birds, such as hooded cranes. Because the fish population in the lakehas dwindled due to the drought, birds are finding food scarce.
Since November, nearly 200,000 migratory birds have gathered around the lake for the winter,about 50,000 more than the average amount in the past decades, according to the statistics fromthe reserve.
“More birds have come, but the drought has largely reduced the number of fish and shrimp in thelake, posing a threat to the birds until they leave in March,” Zhao said.
Every year, Zhao’s team distributes food manually to birds, but this year they thought it necessaryto do an airdrop because the ongoing drought has forced birds to search for food in a wider areaaround the lake. Only an airdrop can help reach them, Zhao said.
The Poyang Lake National Nature Reserve Authority also plans to release 165 million newlyhatched fish into the lake to boost the food supply for birds.
The shrinking aquatic population in the lake has also endangered the freshwater finless porpoise, aspecies unique to the Yangtze River.
Locally called “river pigs”, some finless porpoises have been found starved to death in PoyangLake, said Wang Kexiong, a professor of the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy ofSciences.
Wang said most of the dozens of river pigs he tracks are suffering hunger.
In addition, “river pigs like to live in deep water, and when the dry season comes, they could diveinto mud by mistake, and some will be choked to death”, Wang said.
The Yangtze River has been regularly affected by dry spells since 2000. On Monday, Poyang Lakespanned an area of 230 square kilometers, which is only a fraction of the 4,900 square kilometersit covered at its peak.
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- Did the Three Gorges Dam create China’s devastating drought? (journal.probeinternational.org)
- Free lunches for 600‚000 migratory birds in Kashmir (thehimalayantimes.com)
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