Green partnerships help ecological sites to thrive
A scheme that seeks to conserve ecologically important sites by funding green partnerships has shown early signs of success, officials say.
What used to be abandoned farmland has been turned into fields and a bird sanctuary, while a hillside wasteland is now a butterfly reserve.
The two-year pilot scheme was part of a government nature conservation policy announced in late 2004. It applied to 12 ecological sites, including the Ramar Site in inner Deep Bay, Sham Chung wetland bordering Sai Kung West Country Park, Long Valley in Sheung Shui, and Fung Yuen in Tai Po.
The sites cover 3,418 hectares of land, of which 969 hectares are privately owned. Two schemes were launched.
A public-private partnership scheme allows development - on a scale agreed among developers, landlords and the government - on less sensitive parts of the locations.
A management agreement scheme encourages co-operation between green groups and landlords to generate proposals for sustainable and manageable development.
About HK$4.6 million was granted to three green groups - the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, the Conservancy Association and the Tai Po Environmental Association - to work on three management agreement scheme projects in Long Valley and Fung Yuen.
The assistant director of the Environmental Protection Department, Vincent Tang Chi-leung, who inspected the Long Valley and Fung Yuen sites yesterday, said: 'The policy creates a win-win situation. Ecological sites can be properly conserved, while farmers can have some economical gains.'
In the Long Valley project, the Bird Watching Society has formed a partnership with farmers to turn farmland they had abandoned into wet agricultural lands.
The society's project officer, Vicky Yeung Lee-ki, said: 'We also plant flowering vegetables in fallow dry agricultural land and tomatoes to attract pipits, buntings, and munias. Now in autumn, we can see about 600 birds here, roughly 10 times more than that before the scheme.'
Conservation manager So Kwok-yin, of the Conservancy Association, which runs a programme in Long Valley with farmers, said: 'At first, they had reservations when we introduced the idea of using their abandoned farmland for organic farming. But after the scheme, they can sell the water cress they grow on the market.'
Six public-private partnership projects were proposed and are still being examined.
