Environment experts slam Hong Kong’s Airport Authority over coral translocation plans
They question whether proper assessment was done as authority plans to move just 5 per cent of the corals found near construction site of third runway
The Airport Authority has come under fire again – this time from government environmental advisers – over plans to translocate just 5 per cent of rare and slow-growing coral colonies found near the construction site of its third runway.
Members of the Advisory Council on the Environment questioned whether the authority had conducted proper assessment on the exact species of the coral colonies and whether they were endemic or unique to Hong Kong, with the authority claiming only that it was a common genus in the city’s western waters and of “no conservation interest”.
Two weeks ago, WWF Hong Kong grilled the authority for underestimating the coverage of affected gorgonian coral in the scope of the project during the original environmental impact assessment (EIA). The conservation group believes it is a globally rare species.
The authority’s latest survey found the coverage of Guaiagorgia at the foot of the third runway and landing point of an underwater fuel pipeline at 20 per cent, or around 6,400 colonies. This was far higher than the 1 to 5 per cent estimated in its original EIA report, published in 2014.
But the authority will be translocating fewer than 5 per cent, or 300, of these colonies to Yam Tsai Wan in waters off northeast Lantau.
“The Guaiagorgia is not a species of conservation interest ... it is not on the IUCN Red List, on the Cites (Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species) database, or protected by law as an endangered species in Hong Kong,” argued Eric Ching of Mott MacDonald, the authority’s consultant, at a council meeting yesterday.
