Foreign experts hail nation's biodiversity heroes

The bird watcher

Having spent 10 years living and working in Beijing as a bird enthusiast, Townshend has always enjoyed exploring the city with his camera and binoculars.

When he started watching birds in the Chinese capital, he often found people trapping them, predominantly for the cage bird trade. Townshend said law enforcement authorities were not interested in responding to such complaints.

"You would call them, and it was almost as if they were saying: 'You're calling me about birds? I have so many more important things to do'," he said. "That was the general attitude, but now it's very different."

Townshend still occasionally finds people trapping birds, but he said the reaction of law enforcement authorities has changed.

He now has local police on his WeChat account, and if he finds anyone trapping birds, he can immediately send the authorities the location and a picture of the scene, and they respond quickly.

"Normally, within an hour, they will be there, and that is a huge change from 10 years ago," he said.

Townshend launched a project to track some of the capital's most iconic birds, including the Beijing swift, a migratory species that has been in the city since the 1400s.

He smiled as he shared the fascinating findings from his project. "The Beijing swift flies all the way to South Africa in the northern winter and then comes back to Beijing," he said.

"Even more incredible is that the birds almost certainly don't land during the nine months of traveling. They're eating, drinking and sleeping in the air," he said.

This incredible story inspired schools in Beijing to put up nest boxes on their campuses to provide homes for the swifts. Students have written to construction companies, asking them to make new buildings more "friendly" for the birds.

In April, Townshend was invited to share his experience at a meeting with the Beijing municipal government called to discuss managing renovations to many old buildings in the city, which are vital nesting sites for the swifts.

He said the ideal solution would be for renovations to be carried out while the birds were away from Beijing, or if they had to be done while the swifts were in the city, ways should be considered to enable the birds to access their nests.

Townshend thinks such conservation efforts would have been unlikely five or 10 years ago. "It's just a small example, but it shows that there's a general greater awareness and consideration of biodiversity," he said.

For him, the biggest eye-opener during the trip was the dedication of so many individuals to protecting and restoring nature.

"The other thing that came through strongly was that when people work together and put in the right resources, we can achieve amazing things. Those stories can inspire people not only within China but around the world, and give them hope," he said.