Shrinking Shenzhen mangrove forests poses threat to migratory birds

The dramatic shrinking of Shenzhen's mangrove forests over the past three decades poses a threat to the many migratory birds that visit Hong Kong's Mai Po Nature Reserve each autumn, winter and spring, experts in both cities warn.

Shenzhen had more than 530 hectares of mangrove forest in the early 1980s, forming one of China's most important wetland conservation zones. It now has less than a quarter of that left - just 130 hectares - experts said in a report published in Shenzhen's Daily Sunshine newspaper.

More than half of the endangered species that were living in Shenzhen's mangrove wetlands have disappeared, including birds, plants and fish, the report said.

It said shorebirds had suffered the most. In the early 1990s, more than 70,000 birds lived in the wetlands between Shenzhen's Futian and Nanshan districts. Today, less than a third remain.

The mangrove wetlands straddling Shenzhen and the Mai Po Nature Reserve are considered an important habitat for nearly 200 bird species, especially migratory ones that use the East Asian-Australasian Flyway every year to travel to and from breeding grounds in northern China, Mongolia and Siberia.

"The size of Shenzhen's mangroves is shrinking drastically and is now less than 130 hectares, according to an ongoing survey that I and other NGOs are doing," Wang Yongjun, a former head of Shenzhen's Futian Mangrove Nature Reserve, told the Daily Sunshine in the report published last month.