There are no birds in the Long Valley 95 per cent of the time, according to a KCRC study presented to the Lok Ma Chau spur line appeal board yesterday.
The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation wants the appeal board to grant it an environmental permit to go ahead with the $7 billion project, which was rejected by the Environmental Protection Department last October.
The developer's survey recorded no birds in Long Valley on more than 95 per cent of the 32 days it was carried out, between May 24 last year and May 3 this year.
An ecological team from the KCRC sought to identify birds from a total of 28 species. However, 14 of those species were never spotted during the survey, while some species were seen only occasionally.
Appeal board member Professor Joseph Lee Hun-wei questioned the validity of the study, saying chance factors had played a significant role.
However, David Melville, a former director of the World Wide Fund for Nature Hong Kong and a former project manager in Mai Po, defended the findings. 'It might indicate that the Long Valley does not support a large population of birds,' he said.