NEAR WHERE I STAND, deep inside the Mai Po Nature Reserve, a little white egret bursts into flight from its roost in the mangrove. It shatters the silence and my musings on the fate of this threatened wetland.
The bird makes its frantic ascent and I cannot help but see it as a symbolic retreat of nature in the face of the relentless push by humans to reclaim, develop and make money from every scrap of land available.
I have come to the 1,500-hectare reserve in the northwestern New Territories in search of a better understanding, if not definitive answers, of the future of mud flats and mangroves in Hong Kong and elsewhere. I had pinned my hopes on Mai Po's nature reserve manager Dr Lew Young, to take me on a walk not only through the park, but through the issues that face environmentalists everywhere in promoting the conservation of what the ordinary sceptic may see as marginal land.
In the case of Mai Po, there is also a question of scale, since the park is roughly the same size as Chek Lap Kok. If anyone has the answers, it should be Dr Young, an ecologist who has worked at Mai Po for a decade.
The turnoff to the wetland is near Fairview Park, after a journey on the noisy, crowded San Tin Highway. You could not miss the fact that the wetland is a hot issue locally. At the road junction leading to the conservation area are banners blaming green groups for delaying a drainage project which villagers said could ease flooding threats.
Dr Young, dressed in a green shirt and shorts, and smiling broadly, extends a friendly handshake before apologising for being too busy to talk for a while. I will have to form my own impressions to start with. We arrange to rendezvous an hour later to visit the gei wai, the traditional shrimp farms. Meanwhile, the photographer and I explore the reserve's famous floating walkway.
