Bird-watching in Beijing

Editor's note: "I shock my friends when I tell them my favorite city to watch birds is in Beijing!" Having lived in Beijing for more than ten years, UK conservationist Terry Townshend has tons of stories to tell when it comes to wildlife protection in the city, many of them involving birds. What has he learned about bird-watching in Beijing? How to make the city a better place for both people and wildlife? Terry shares his thoughts. 

Hello and welcome to China Talk. My name is Terry Townshend. Now I am a Beijing-based wildlife conservationist and fellow of the Paulson Institute.

My passion for nature started from an early age. I began watching birds in my family garden when I was just four years old. And I was fortunate to be born and raised in a small coastal village next to a nature reserve. So I grew up surrounded by an abundance of nature. A few years later, I was shocked to hear how, globally, we are losing our nature at an incredible rate.

Since 1970 when I was born, the population of vertebrates has fallen on average by 69 percent; 90 percent of the large fish have disappeared from our oceans; and the extinction rate is thought to be up to 1,000 times the natural rate. If we continue on this trajectory, we face a world where we could lose as many as 50 percent of all species by 2050.

When I heard these statistics, I wanted to do something to help. I've worked on environmental policy, including climate change, for many years as I was worried about the impact of climate change on nature. I joined a special unit set up by the UK government to support the G8 presidency in 2005 to put climate change on the agenda of leaders for the first time. And later I worked as policy director for an NGO, working with parliaments in different countries to advance environmental legislation. And that's how I came to China.

In 2010, I was invited by the National People's Congress to help support development of a new general law on climate change, and that led to my discovery that Beijing has a surprising amount of biodiversity. I shock my friends when I tell them, "My favorite place to go bird watching is in Beijing." And I'll tell you why.

Beijing's international image is of an overcrowded, overpopulated modern city. But there is another side to Beijing that is poorly known: its wild side. When I first came to Beijing, and people found out I like to watch birds, they would look at me as if I was crazy. They'd say "Why are you in Beijing? There are no birds in Beijing!" But, as I started to explore the city, I began to see a great diversity and abundance of migratory birds and realized that Beijing is a very good place to watch birds.

The reality is that Beijing has recorded more than 500 species of bird, and that beats my capital city of London; it beats Washington D.C.; it beats Paris, Berlin, Moscow etc. In fact, among G20 capital cities, Beijing ranks No. 2, behind only Brasilia.

So, why is Beijing so good for birds? Location, location, location. Beijing is situated at the heart of a major migratory route for birds called the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. We can think of Beijing as a "service station" along this bird expressway, where some birds can stop to refuel on their long journey south. Some will stay in Beijing for the winter; others will go to South China; some to Southeast Asia and others even go as far as Australia or New Zealand. And of course, in spring, it's rush hour again as these birds race north to breed.

Beijing has several different kinds of habitat, each attractive for different types of bird, for example, mountains, wetlands, grassland and forest. So we can even consider Beijing to be a "five-star" service station on this expressway.

There is a famous quote that is behind everything I do. And that quote is, "In the end, everyone wants to protect what they love, but they can only love what they know." This was said by a Senegalese conservationist called Baba Dioum. Around the world, every day, we lose a lot of incredible wildlife simply because people don't know it's there. So, the first step towards building support for protecting nature is to know what you have around you. When you know about nature and its incredible stories, there's a chance you will fall in love with it. And if you fall in love with it, you will want to protect it.

I would like to introduce you to one particular bird: Beijing swift. This bird, that can fit into the palm of your hand, spends nearly all of its life in the air. It eats in the air; it drinks in the air and even sleeps in the air.

Until 2015, nobody knew where the Beijing swift went when it disappeared from Beijing's skies in July before returning again the following April. However, thanks to a collaboration between Chinese and European scientists, tiny tracking devices were fitted to 31 Beijing swifts at the Summer Palace. To our surprise, the data showed that the Beijing swifts fly all the way to southern Africa - Botswana, Namibia and South Africa - for the northern winter, crossing more than 30 borders and, remarkably, almost certainly making the journey to Africa and back without landing at all. That's nine months in the air!

Since the swift-tracking project, as more people have learned about this incredible bird, it has inspired people to do incredible things. There are now several schools in Beijing making special boxes for swifts to provide them with new homes, and one eight-year-old student went a step further. She said, "It's easy for us to make swift boxes, but why don't we write to the bosses of the building companies and ask them to make their new buildings more friendly for swifts?" Great idea!

So four students from different schools got together and wrote a letter to a real estate company to ask for new buildings to be more friendly for swifts. The chairman wrote back and invited the students to meet with him. He listened to the story of the Beijing swifts and at the end he responded, "Wow, I didn't know about this bird before. For 20 years we've been making buildings to make people's lives better, but I now realize we should be making buildings not only for people but also for nature."

Most people who live in cities become detached from nature. They might say, "Why should I care if a frog in Costa Rica goes extinct? How does it affect me?" Well, we absolutely should care because biodiversity loss is not just sad that we lose species forever, it presents tremendous risks to us, as humans. Recent studies have shown that over $44 trillion of the global economy which is around 50 percent is highly or moderately dependent on nature or the services it provides. And around 70 percent of all the medicines brought to market in the last 20 years are derived from nature. So, as we destroy nature, we undermine our economy, and we destroy our future medicine cabinet. That is why connecting people with biodiversity is so important.

During my time in China, I have witnessed what I describe as an "environmental awakening." This has come from the government, for example, the creation a new national park system, strengthening of environmental protection laws and better law enforcement, the protection of coastal wetlands in the Yellow Sea and its innovative ecological red line project; from a greater media interest in nature, and an explosion of local environmental NGOs across the country, powered by enthusiastic and passionate young people. But what we are doing now is far from enough. There is still an immense amount to do if we are to meet the goals of the new Global Biodiversity Framework.

Ultimately, we must integrate nature into everything we do. Every decision about infrastructure, agriculture, transport, energy, about any aspect of our economy, must take into account the value of nature. And that includes governments, businesses, cities and communities.

The great thing is that everyone can do something, no matter how big or small. If you live in a community with a green space, speak to the management about reducing and eliminating insecticide use and leaving some areas "wild" to allow nature to flourish; if you are a student at school, ask how the school can manage their green spaces in a way that is more friendly for wildlife; if you work for a business, ask how they are taking into account nature in their operations.

If all of us do something, we can bend the curve of biodiversity loss. What happens next is up to every one of us.

Thank you!

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