Land deals that safeguard nature sites are welcome
It is more than two years since the government announced a new conservation policy to end a stalemate that has put valuable ecological sites at risk of degradation and neglect. The policy envisaged a partnership with landowners that would lift the ban on development in less ecologically sensitive areas of 12 selected New Territories sites, in return for the owners taking an interest in conservation.
It was an attempt to reconcile development with protection of ecological treasures that could easily be lost forever. It is important that Hong Kong does not fail in this objective. One of the measures by which a society is judged nowadays is how it conserves its natural heritage. Our city stands out among developed nations where there is still time to prevent ecological disaster. It remains home to an astonishing heritage of flora and fauna.
We have nearly 3,000 species of plants within our borders, compared with only about 400 in the whole of Britain, 400 species of birds and 70 per cent of the world's butterfly species, of which four-fifths are to be found in Sha Lo Tung, on the border with Shenzhen.
Sha Lo Tung, also home to more than 100 species of dragonfly, is one of the 12 sites selected for development and management by public-private partnership. It is also, as we report today, the subject of a 30-year tug-of-war between development and conservation that has broken out into a row between two government bureaus. The landowner, having been denied approval to build a golf course and luxury homes in the valley, has proposed exchanging its land for a development site to be carved out of the adjacent green belt, and has offered HK$100 million for a trust fund to finance a conservation programme for the land.
The proposal has split the Environment, Transport and Works Bureau, which approves the development proposal, and the Housing, Planning and Lands Bureau, which opposes green-belt development. Without government backing the proposal is less likely to win Town Planning Board approval. A similar fate awaits a proposal by Sun Hung Kai Properties to rezone the sensitive Shum Chung site for development.
Leaving aside argument about the development proposal, it would be a pity if a chance to introduce a self-financed conservation programme for Sha Lo Tung was lost. If land is to be exchanged with the government, it would make more sense if it were in an area zoned for development. After all, the idea is that deals will be struck for undeveloped areas to be preserved and perhaps opened up for sensitive ecotourism.