From fishing and ivory bans to wetlands conservation, WWF-Hong Kong marks 40 years of progress as it faces a new threat – climate change
- As WWF-Hong Kong marks its 40th anniversary, its accomplishments include the establishment of the Mai Po nature reserve and bans on trawling and trade in ivory
- But challenges such as climate change, which will see sea levels rise and coastal areas flooded, mean there’s no time to rest, its chairman Dan Bradshaw says
Dan Bradshaw is in his happy place: hunkered down in a birdwatching hide, his binoculars scanning the mudflats of Deep Bay, the body of water between Hong Kong’s Yuen Long district and Shenzhen in China’s Guangdong province.
It’s one of southern China’s most important wetlands, says the chairman of WWF-Hong Kong, the conservation group that’s managed the Mai Po marshes since 1983, in cooperation with the Hong Kong government’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD).
More than 80,000 birds rely on it for feeding, breeding and resting, he says. It’s also a refuelling station in winter for birds travelling the 13,000km East Asian – Australasian Flyway migratory path between Arctic Russia and Australia.
Bradshaw has been with the global non-profit’s Hong Kong arm – which is celebrating its 40th anniversary (it was officially established in December 1981) – almost since its inception, holding finance and legal roles before taking up his current position.
An avid birdwatcher, he can identify a species before most people have even spotted it. “My mother encouraged me to learn about different bird species when I was a young boy growing up in New Zealand,” says the 74-year-old.
Today he easily reels off names of birds circling the bay as well as those wading in the shallow waters, some feeding on the abundance of mudskippers, crabs and other aquatic organisms. “There’s an egret, and over there are ospreys … that one there is an Eastern marsh harrier,” he says.