Biodiversity Diary a trip to Wulong — John MacKinnon
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Exploring Chishui
Red-billed magpie on Chinese fir
Blue rock-thrush gathers food for chicks
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Jurassic Park
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More than pollution in Chongqing Chongqing is a noisy dusty city where the humid climate and deep river setting hold smog and acid rain for days at a time. But Chongqing is large and outside the city roll range after range of hills, each more glorious than the last.
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Biodiversity Diary ECBP Newsletter Supplements May 28-31, 2009
In the far southeast corner of the municipality lies the county of Wulong and here the air is clean and the water clear. Here is a natural wonder land of fantastic limestone with deep collapsed sinkholes called ‘tiankang’, magnificent natural stone bridges, deep caves and grottos. Parts of Wulong are inscribed on UNESCO’s list of natural World Heritage Sites as units of the serial site calledSouth China Karst.
The three hour drive from Chongqing town to Wulong County is scenic and splendid following deep gorges or climbing over rugged ridge crests. Brave new towns, huge bridges and highways remain drarfed by the scale of the landscape and the hills are a patchwork of bare rock, planted forests, secondary forest and farmlands. Mioa minority villages stand beside pretty terraces. It is planting time and men drive placid buffalos to plough the fields and girls and women hurt their backs permanently bent over to sort and plant the paddy seedlings. Birds are nesting and singing. The valleys echo with the clear calls of the cuckoos and the shrieks of red-billed magpies. Female Russet Sparrow prepares to nest
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Wildlife among the farms and villages The visit had been organized by local Environmental Protection Bureau and Dr. Zhang Yingyi of the ECBP Chongqing project. The team was completed by FFI consultant Evan BowenJones, VAC project manager Muriel Vives, local biologists Profs. Yuan Xinzhong and Liu Hong and variously mayors and other officials of county and townships. One of the reasons for the trip was to see if ECBP could start a field monitoring of biodiversity in the county. Fern frond, Hesperid butterfly and spot-necked dove
Prof. Yuan wanted us to explore the vegetation at the bottom of a deep tiangkang but to get there we needed to go through a deep cave for more than 1 hour. With little experience, poor torches and only one pathetic little rope between us, the team decided the descent was too dangerous so the treat of the first bio-exploration of that tiangkang remains for someone else !! We climbed instead to the rim of the tiangkang and gazed down in awe to its hidden depths. On our way back to Wulong town we stopped to interview villagers and sample village life. There were huge cabbages growing in the fertile soil and many birds both varied and relatively tame. But we also learned that they use many chemicals.
Miao zhu farmland
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Lift allows tourists descent the tiankang
Deep gorges dominate the landscape. Male plumbeous redstart flashes his red tail.
Deep Tiankang in natural vegetation remains unexplored
Magpie robin and male Russet Sparrow
Film set for Zhang Yimo !! Inside WH Site.
ist developments are being developed as a series of alpine villas and the borrowed name of ‘Evian’.
On the higher grasslands is the Lady Fairy mountain resort where visitors can enjoy horse riding, archery, tennis and skiing. Larger tour-
One wonders who is in charge of the planning. And who gave permission for the building of a film set inside the main World Heritage site ?
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The natural stone bridges The great tian kang and natural stone bridges are truly spectacular and all the better for being clothed in natural vegetation. But it is the sheer scale of them that makes one gasp. The arches are hundreds of metres high and the tourists that swarm beneath are completely dwarfed.
Yellow-throated bunting (Evan Bowen-Jones)
A stream of clear water winds and surges down the valley. Forktails and plumbeous redstarts chase insects along among the rocks. Wagtails hunt along the bank and noisy Himalayan Whistling thrushes dive for cover into dark caves and crevices.
It is the sheer scale of the formations that makes you gasp.
Cilren sell wreaths of wild flowers, tourists shout and the walls echo.
Giant water-boatman insects floated on the water surface and frogs tadpoles lurked in the stiller pools. BIODIVERSITY A
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A vertical world
With high rainfall and spray from waterfalls, the forests are always green and perching on vertical limestone walls is pretty safe from human interference.
Nesting peregrine falcons chase and shriek in the sky, plants cling precariously to cliffs and everywhere water tumbles in long elegant falls and cascades.
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Boating up Furong river Wulong hosts the last two families of black-headed monkeys in Chongqing and most northerly population worldwide, but to see these rare creatures we must make a boat trip up the Furong river. Planning to start biodiversity monitoring
Natural bridges of Wulong WH Site
Spotted in the treetops high up the cliff side—a group of rare black-headed leaf monkeys.
The scenery is spectacular but the water level is already raised by construction of a dam and the habitat of the monkeys has suffered some loss. Formerly there were several families.
Local villagers express their opinions Where are those monkeys ?
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Gorges, waterfalls and rare monkeys
Wild Camelia
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EU-China Biodiversity Programme Add: Rm. 503, FECO Plaza, Huoyingfang Hutong, Xicheng District, Beijing. 100035, P.R. China Fax: (+8610) 8220 5421 Email: info@ecbp.cn