The Roller - part 2

Graphic: WWF

In general the chain starts in the remote rural corners of Southeast Asia where opportunistic villagers bag-up rolled pangolins they happen to come across in forests. In Malaysia oil palm plantations are the most common hunting grounds, where neat, evenly spaced rows of trees make for easy spotting and capture. Buyers regularly scour the region to look for caught pangolins, and they deliver their haul to intermediaries in larger towns. 

     If the meat is to be frozen the animals are killed with a hammer blow to the head. The carcasses are quickly dunked in boiling water to make it easy to scrape off the scales, then slit open and gutted. The organs are washed, put into a plastic bag and stuffed back into the body cavity of the dead animal before it all gets frozen together. The scales are sun-dried and packed into large sacks.  Other pangolins are live-shipped, in which case they may be force fed water, or injected with fluids to bolster their weight. The value per kilogram is estimated to multiply ten fold from first capture to the Chinese dinner table.

     It is clear that the intercepted trade is only the tip of the iceberg. There is no evidence that the captured haul has dented the enthusiasm of traffickers, and one estimate puts the demand in China at up to 135,000 pangolins a year.

     

Photo: AP

How is this possible when China is a signatory to the CITES convention? The agreement puts all four Asian pangolin species on a “zero quota qualification,” which translates to no international commercial trade. Inside of China the species was still classed a Category II endangered animal as of 2014, according to the IUCN Red List. In theory that means that hunting licenses could still be granted, although the Red List states that none had been issued since protection was tightened in 2007. Crucially, however, Category II allows domestic trade in “stockpiled” goods through “designated outlets such as hospitals.” The problem is that this conservation status has not been reassessed in China since the late 1980s, when the situation looked different. Today there is one obvious flaw in Chinese tolerance for a “domestic” trade – there is practically no domestic supply, with the species likely extinct in several provinces.

     There are calls within the country to upgrade the protection for the animal to the highest national level, yet a survey in 2008 found that 80 percent of traditional medicine shops in southern China, and there are many of them in every town, offered pangolin scales. Eighteen percent of restaurants claimed to sell the meat, and the figure was as high as 40 percent in some cities such as Nanning in southern Yunnan, and Haiko on Hainan island. Since 2010 in Yunnan Province more than 2,500 kg of scales, representing nearly 4,900 pangolins, plus 220 living and 39 dead pangolins have been seized by authorities clamping down on unauthorized outlets. 

     

Photo: TRAFFIC

In April 2014 there was a glimmer of hope for the species along with other endangered animals, when the government to much fanfare announced stricter enforcement of existing laws to stop people eating illegally hunted animals. Now a person eating protected wildlife can face ten years in jail. Sounds good, but will it be effective for pangolins who are not so much hunted, as they don’t exist in China, but are smuggled across borders?

     The real problem in China seems to be that too many people believe in the magic powers of weird animals, including people involved in animal conservation.

     Here is an excerpt from a paper presented by a state official in 2008:

     “As early as the 16th century, records in Compendium of Materia Medica compiled by the prestigious herbalist Li Shizhen showed that pangolin scales are effective in eliminating turgescence, discharging purulence, dredging main and collateral channels, invigorating the circulation of blood and stimulating milk secretion.” You might imagine that the official was an anthropologist, or historian, but this came from an officer of the Endangered Species Wild Fauna Import and Export Management Office. He was presenting a paper at an international workshop in Singapore aimed at pulling together to save the pangolin from extinction.

     His paper went on to suggest that modern studies support ancient beliefs, saying pangolins can help with “tubal obstruction,” “hysterolyoma thymion” and “urinary calculus,” whatever they are. I wonder if anyone in the conference hall full of conservationists understood those obscure medical words.  The paper concluded with a disturbing contradiction, that "China has taken strict measures to regulate and control the trade in pangolin scales for medicinal use, while respecting the needs for preserving the traditional culture."

      This doesn't work. The pangolins will disappear if someone doesn't persuade wealthy people in China that there is no medical evidence for their "magic," and the scales are just matted hair. And also there is no "stockpile." Mainland demand is Hoovering up animals from surrounding countries captured and traded illegally, and that's a well-documented fact. The prevailing attitude in the mainland contrasts with Taiwan where the department of health banned pangolin scales for medicinal use in 2000, despite the same beliefs in traditional medicine. And within China the deference to “traditions” doesn't go unchallenged. 

     The forestry police department submitted a paper at the same conference stating clearly: "as long as there is a demand in the market, and available supply, wildlife crime will continue." The Category II protective status of the pangolin wasn't enough to preserve the species, and the 20-year-old classification needed to be upgraded, it said. People caught eating endangered species were let off too easily, with just nominal fines in certain provinces. "However, as wildlife consumers mainly belong to high social status groups, fines are not sufficiently deterent," the forestry police presentation bluntly noted.

     So far the trend has been that as China gets richer more pangolins are eaten. It looks like Chinese demand will kill-off Asian species, unless attitudes change. And as predicted a few years ago, the illegal trade is beginning to make an impact on Africa too, where four related species are now being targeted for the “traditional” Chinese medicine market. Hong Kong customs seized over a ton of scales in a shipping container from Kenya in May 2014, and then another three tons a month later in a shipment from Cameroon via Malaysia, according to Annamiticus.  

     But before we focus too much on Chinese beliefs it should be pointed out that belief in magic easily crosses national borders, as western alternative medicine professionals eagerly show. There are several North American websites that list the health benefits of pangolin keratine. Ying Yang House in Tenesee, USA, for example relays the information that pangolin scales can unblock menses, promote discharge of pus and expel wind-damp from the channels. Perhaps if less "wind-damp" was expelled by herbalists there may be a chance for the survival of animals like pangolins.

     But the belief in magic animals is rooted deeply in the human psyche, dating back to well before the days the Internet allowed us to find out which animals and their powers were real, and which animals were made up. To take one example, Europeans believed in unicorns for centuries. And of course if they believed in unicorns -- weird looking animals -- it follows that they believed in the magic powers of the unicorn horn, a very rare and expensive item that only royals and aristocrats could afford. The horns in fact came from a real animal just as strange as the imaginary unicorn, a narwhal. The cetacean species live in the far north, rarely seen by people other than highly specialised arctic dwellers. Some of them discovered the usefulness of the brittle narwhal spear, as fishing rods and other tools, but they also discovered that traders from the south were willing to pay good money for them. So for centuries the elongated and beautifully twisted incisors trickled into the European luxury market fetching prices as high as twenty times their weight in gold, traded as unicorn horns. So precious was the item that Queen Elizabeth I of England was said to have a narwhal sceptre, given to her by an explorer. And similar to a pangolin’s scale, the tusk ground into a powder had healing powers, from poison antidote to anti-depressant, well-paid doctors claimed.

     Luckily the narwhal survived this infatuation. The belief in unicorns faded from the minds of the more or less sane before industrialisation opened up trade roots and mass exploitation of the species became a possibility. By the time Europeans had diesel powered ice-breakers and the exploding harpoon, they had lost interest in horned cetaceans and instead focused on sperm whales, with devastating effect. Pangolins on the other hand continue to be an intensely desired commodity in the age of refrigerated transport, AK-47s, GPS and smart phones. 

     The species has been listed amongst the world’s most extraordinary and threatened animals by the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) organisation. But conservationists fear that little is being done to save them. Michael Lau of WWF told me about field surveys he did in southern China, where he failed to find fresh burrows in Guangdong, Guangxi or Hainan. Camera trap studies yielded equally poor results, forcing many biologists to suspect the worst about the fate of the Chinese pangolin in its namesake country. “Enforcement needs to be stepped up, and demand needs to be addressed. They cannot be raised in captivity, all consumption is from the wild ones,” he told me. Elsewhere, another zoologist was emphatic: “unless efforts are taken to address both demand for, and supply of pangolins, they will go extinct in Asia in the short term future,” Dan Challender told Agence France-Presse.

     In this depressing picture of an animal pushed to the brink, largely because of bad science and a misplaced defence of “cultural heritage,” there is a strange, little understood and utterly unexpected beacon of hope. That beacon is Hong Kong.

     “Hong Kong probably has one of the best populations in the region,” Lau told me. Good forest re-growth and the fact that they are mostly left unmolested for now provide two basic requirements for a species surprisingly adaptable to changing environments despite its rarity. If they can eat ants and they are left alone, they’ll plod on, seems to be the message from the few people in the world who have had time to look closely at this weirdly unglamorous species.

A HK pangolin caught in the AFCD camera trap survey

      But we know very little about them, and that’s another reason why the Hong Kong population should be carefully protected. The academic literature on pangolins is written in a list of potentials, and gaps in knowledge. We hardly know anything, including real population densities, size of home ranges, how families are organized, the precise mating season, age at sexual maturity, the period of gestation and maternal care. Studies in captivity conclude they are thoroughly unhappy in a cage and tend to injure themselves trying to escape, and any findings can’t be made sense of until there is better knowledge of what they do in the wild. We just don’t know these animals that are being packed and crated in their thousands for the massive underground trade.

     Hong Kong could play a role in plugging that knowledge gap. Ecological studies here would help to formulate a plan to protect them throughout their range. Understanding pangolins is also key to understanding the indigenous ecology of the territory, as millions of years of interaction between pangolins, their insect prey and native flora has shaped the land. But of course a study like that would depend on luck not running out for Hong Kong’s pangolins.

     The international poaching threat can only grow as economic pressures work on a depleted population. One of the last wild pangolins Lau saw in Hong Kong was a dead one caught in an illegal trap. They’ve been hunted out of the wider region, and the cash value of their flesh and scales only goes up. Traders have been going further a field, more deeply into the wild heart of Borneo, Sumatra and South Asia, and now Africa. When will they simply turn around and clean up in gentle Hong Kong? 

     Lau reckons that there is a real risk that pangolins here will be targeted systematically in the future.  The territory has already seen poachers bundling rare Buddha pines and incense trees onto high powered speedboats, and racing the coastguard across the mainland border. There is also the illegal trapping of the indigenous golden coin turtle, another magic animal worth thousands on the medicinal and ornamental market. Lau says we should protect our rare population with frequent patrols, to stop illegal trapping and hunting from taking root here. The pangolins may need a little bit of magic to save themselves from disappearing off the face of the planet, but then again Herklots might think it was miraculous that they are still here at all.     

The Roller - part 1

For centuries people have been captivated by the little-known pangolin, an animal so strange that it seems almost reasonable to assume it had magic properties. A mammal with scales. 

     Take a pangolin scale and burn it down to ash. Mix-in seven scorpions and an oyster shell, add musk, linseed oil and wax to form a small rod. Wrap it in cotton and ram it into your ear for "ringing sounds and deafness due to sexual weakness". This was a medical recipe reported by a Western researcher in Shanghai in the 1930s. Cooked in oil, butter and boy's urine, those scales could also help quell hysterical crying in children, and calm women possessed by "devils and ogres," the same researcher noted. Though for me the most convincing description by Professor Bernard Read in Shanghai is that of a piece of scale fixed on to a length of bamboo, forming a nice sensible back scratcher.

     Writing 80 years ago about the species in Hong Kong, biologist G.A.C Herklots reported on Professor Read's findings. He was concerned about the effect of Chinese demand on Hong Kong's pangolin population. The animal was endemic to southern China and yet in the 1930s there were already notable imports from modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia. Though the numbers cited then are enviably low compared to today's industrial slaughter, the colonial government was persuaded to protect the species by law. Herklots noted that it wouldn't be easy to enforce a ban, especially in the wild far reaches of the New Territories.

     Jumping forwards by eight decades, it is remarkable to discover that the elusive animal Herklots called the "most primitive mammal in China", may just about continue to make a quiet living in woodlands across Hong Kong. Shy, nocturnal pangolins were snapped 37 times in the 2002-2006 AFCD camera trap survey across the territory. Its score earned it the status "rare," putting it amongst other esoteric species such as the crab-eating mongoose and the Eurasian otter.

Photo: The Guardian

     Seeing any at all in Hong Kong is surprising for a species under heavy threat all around the region, with an underground trade in flesh and scales larger than anything Herklots could possibly have imagined before modern infrastructure and market developments. They have been cleared from vast tracts of forestry in China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and they are being pushed further and further away from China through Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesian Borneo. 

     Yet in Hong Kong the species of clings on. We may even be hosting one of the healthiest populations in the region, according to WWF senior biologist Michael Lau. It isn't easy to encounter the animal directly, but it is relatively easy to find their distinctive burrows, he told me. Occasionally members of the public will hand one in to the care of Kadoorie farm for protection until a controlled release, and sometimes field workers like Lau would come across a dead one in an illegal trap.

     But what are they really?

     Also known as the scaly ant-eater, they have been likened to walking pine cones, or artichoke hearts. It's unlikely that Herklot's "primitive" label would hold up against today's biological definitions, but I'm sure some zoologists wouldn’t object to "freaky". The most striking thing about this small-dog-sized mammal is its scales, covering the length of its body from a narrow cone-head to a long thick tail. It looks like a reptile. One escaped from Prague zoo, swam across the Moldova River, and walked 10 km before being mistaken for a crocodile and shot. A sad fate for a harmless beast with no teeth, though it is possible onlookers were also frightened by its long digging claws.

      The scales are made from the same material that forms human hair -- keratin, but compacted into a hard layer of armour. Bornean warriors used the stuff to make protective clothing and go on the rampage, but pangolins are more passive. Under threat they just roll themselves into a ball, protecting their soft underbelly. The strategy earned the species its name, from the Malayan word “peng-goling” meaning “the roller.” It is probably effective against a leopard cat or an owl, but worse than useless against human poachers who simply pick up the conveniently rolled animal and put it in a bag.

     The hairs that form the scales continue to grow through its life, neatly filed down at the edges by frantic and frequent digging. The ant-eater is a prolific burrower, able to dig down several meters in a few minutes, relying heavily on its long and curved excavator claws. Above ground it balances on the same backpointing nails, to walk in a strange slothful gait, or it uses them as grappling hooks to climb trees. They sleep through the day in underground tunnels, plugging up the entrance to keep out unwanted visitors.  They have beautiful eyes, but they can't see too well, instead relying on a strong sense of smell.

     The pangolin's hidden secret weapon is its extremely long tongue. It is anchored deep down in the body as far back as the pelvis, and when it is not being used it retracts into a sheath inside the chest cavity. On the hunt the Pangolin slithers this sticky organ into deep underground chambers, lapping up ants and termites by the thousands, chasing escapees up all the minor branches. There are keratin spikes inside the stomach, as well as swallowed stones and grit. These work together to grind the insect harvest into a nutritious paste.

   

Photo borrow from the BBC

  It is a paste notoriously difficult to reproduce in captivity. A 3kg pangolin eats three to four hundred grammes of ants or termites per feeding. Few other creatures, including humans, are better designed to find and harvest ants. If you wanted to find ants to feed your pet pangolin, your best strategy would be to have another pangolin to find them for you. This is thought to be one of the reasons the animal is notoriously difficult to keep in captivity. Autopsies show that many die soon after capture from stomach ulcers.

     There are four Asian species that live from India in the west to Taiwan in the east, and south to the bottom of the Indonesian archipelago. All are endangered by the exotic meat and medicine trade, and another four African species have started to be targeted by traffickers in recent yearsforced to widen their search. They have been likened to South American armadillos but the similarities are another case of convergent evolution. In prehistoric times they were more widespread, with fossil finds as far away from today's home bases as Germany and even North America. The species quietly living in Hong Kong is called the Chinese pangolin, manis pentadactyla, and it is clearly in trouble.

     The species has been listed “critically endangered” on the IUCN red list since a reassessment in 2013.  Its population has greatly reduced in the last 20 years. Back in 1996 it was only considered to be at low risk. At that time Malaysia exported thousands of skins to Japan, which were then sent over to Mexico to supply "traditional" leather crafts. Four years later a ban on all international trade was imposed, after conservationists effectively demonstrated the precarious status of wild populations. But the 2000 CITES agreement to stop international trade did nothing to stem contraband for the booming meat and medicine market in mainland China. Vietnam and Korea also remain minor destinations, but all experts point their fingers clearly at China, as by far the most significant grave for the scaly ant-eater.

     A recent study of ten provinces within China suggests that the population there may have crashed by up to 90 percent in just ten years. And in Malaysia, pangolin hunters have told researchers that an explosion in ant and termites shows the huge extent of pangolin loss. The two species that existed for thousands of years in Vietnam are now critically endangered. Elsewhere hunters have reported they no longer actively look for pangolin as it is scarcely worth their efforts since they are so difficult to come by. 

     "We are watching a species just slip away," Chris Shepard of TRAFFIC told the Associated Press. It is a different situation from the animals that humans have nudged out of existence by the unforeseen results of environmental destruction. In this case, even if on paper there is acknowledgment of the need to protect, we are actively hunting the species to the brink. The problem lies in enforcement and stemming the demand. 

     In May 2007 Chinese marine authorities were alerted to a suspicious boat drifting on the open sea.  Fishermen off the coast of Guangdong had noticed a strange smell coming from an unregistered vessel. Coastguards boarded the vessel to find it deserted, an unmanned ghost ship that would have been lifeless had it not been for the menagerie of endangered species it carried. It was packed with leatherback turtles, monitor lizards and Brazilian turtles. 5,000 rare and protected animals in all. Most of them were alive, but some, such as the bear paws, were chopped-up and vacuum packed. Amongst the haul there were 31 live pangolins. Transporting pangolins live is often the cheapest way of keeping the meat fresh, although vacuum packing and freezing makes it easier to carry in bulk.

     The image of that mysterious haul on a drifting ghost-ship is memorable, but as far as pangolin trafficking is concerned it was a miniscule haul. Tens of thousands of pangolins have been intercepted en route to China in just the last few years.  Vietnamese authorities stopped about five tonnes of frozen meat in a single haul the following year, packed into 270 boxes on a ship. It was the year that they captured 23 tons of flesh from about 8,000 animals in a single week. While over in Indonesia officers confiscated 14 tons in Sumatra in just one month. In June 2010 Chinese coastguards boarded another fishing boat off the coast of Guangdong. They found 2,090 frozen pangolins and 2 tonnes of scales. The haul was heading for a market in which the meat could fetch 100 dollars a kilogram, and the scales 700. They arrested 5 Chinese and 1 Malay on the ship. 

     These are the large busts that make the general press, but the constant trickle of interceptions in the past 15 years are piling into a mountain of dead pangolins. Malaysia alone confiscated 30,000 ant-eaters between 2000 and 2007, while Indonesia registered 49,662 in the same period. These are the ones that the authorities stopped and declared. Imagine the numbers that slipped by to keep the trade alive.

     A contraband haul of over 8,000 pangolins in 2013 in 13 countries was estimated to represent 10 to 20 percent of the overall trade. That would suggest a total of 40,000 -- 80,000 pangolins traded that year, according to the Pangolin Project of US anti-animal-trafficking organisation Annamiticus.

     In another indication of scale based on notes seized from traffickers, researchers calculated that around 22,000 pangolins were trafficked from Malaysian Borneo alone in 2009, according to a paper published in Frontiers of Ecology and Environment journal.

     An international network of overlapping crime syndicates maintains the trade in which goods are often transshipped at ocean rendezvous organised by satellite phone.  Records show that Hong Kong with its hidden bays and global connections plays a significant role as transshipment point. Elsewhere they have even been smuggled in exchange for arms, as was the case before Acehnese separatists came to a peace agreement with the Indonesian government in 2005. Word spread among Aceh’s rebel guerrillas that Thai arms dealers were offering up to five Cambodian AK-47s in Phuket for a single pangolin. The guerrillas believed that Thai mafia drank the blood of the animal, but the economics of the trade would suggest that the animals probably ended up in China or Vietnam.     

Three big birds - Imperial eagle

Photo Andi Li HKBWS (Dear Andy would you mind if I use this awesome picture in my blog? please get in contact. js)

“We’re not bunny huggers, we’re conservationists,” a seasoned bird spotter told me one day. He was describing what it was like to witness an imperial eagle launch itself at a flock of waterfowl, and scatter them in their thousands as it grabbed one carefully targeted individual, tearing it apart in a bloody mess of feathers and guts. 

    “An incredible sight,” he said with a sigh.

This came from a man who deeply values the avocets, herons, and ducks that yearly lure the raptors in to Hong Kong’s wetland marshes. He made me see that bird watching is much more than looking at individual birds, it’s an appreciation of the ecosystem that we share with them. 

    And the imperial eagle is an endangered predator at the apex of a vast system that connects subtropical Hong Kong to central Eurasia. Each winter a few individuals make it to Hong Kong, it could just be a pair one year, or perhaps five or six in another. It’s a raptor of similar dimensions to the white-bellied sea eagle, but a much darker bird with a more menacing reputation, reinforced by its martial name. If you’re lucky enough to witness it, its vicious attack on white feathered water birds is much more shocking than the sight of sea eagles carrying fish off in their talons. I had to cheat, by looking at stunning pictures captured by local birders. The closest I have come to spotting one was about 200m at Maipo nature reserve on a cold and drizzly February afternoon where an earnest twitcher pointed towards a distant clump of trees and told me there was one in there. Nice to know, but I couldn’t see it through my modest binoculars.

    

Photo borrowed  from HK magazine online

Worldwide the eastern imperial eagle is listed as vulnerable, with many local populations clearly declining. The usual suspects of habitat loss and prey depletion play a big part in endangering the species, but more direct threats from humans are often cited. Electrocution on power lines frequently kill individuals, and poisonings and shootings are regularly reported. The species is spread widely from Hungary in the west through Siberia and eastern China, and southwards down the east African rift valley to Kenya, and around the Arabian peninsula from Jordan to Yemen. Its total population is estimated in the thousands, so considering the massive range, we are again looking at a thinly dispersed species. But unlike the white-bellied sea eagle these birds are nomadic. They hitch a ride on the dramatic migrations of gentler birds, picking them off one-by-one as hunger drives them to the kill.

    Their presence in Hong Kong is thanks to what is possibly our most important natural asset, the Maipo marshes nature reserve. The protected wetlands serve a vital role, for Hong Kong, for China, for the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF), for the world. To understand that point you have to go back to the idea of the ecosystem, that every piece of wildlife you see is a part of an interlocking set of relationships with other life forms and habitats. 

     Every wild bird is a component, every migrating bird links the local ecology to a wider ecosystem. Mai po is a vital staging post and destination for some 60,000 birds every winter, and another 30,000 in summer. It is part of a 13,000 km chain of wetlands that joins arctic Siberia to untamed estuaries in Borneo, Papuan swamps and pristine shores of southern New Zealand lapped by icy Antarctic sea currents.

Credit: Wetlands International

    Every imperial eagle that arrives in winter connects Hong Kong to Mongolian grasslands and the Russian steppes. The wetlands that link the EAAF are few and far between, and they are being squeezed throughout Asia. Maipo is one of the best protected, and thanks to the WWF and the international Ramsar convention on wetlands, one of the best managed. It is a good place to feel hopeful about the state of the world’s water birds. The numbers are up and rarities keep returning. Around a fifth of the world population of blackfaced spoonbills continue to return every year. Another nine globally endangered migratory species continue to return annually, including imperial eagles.

    But impressions can be deceiving. The fact that life abounds in Maipo is at least partly due to the destruction of habitats elsewhere along the same flyway. Birds are being squeezed towards us because other options are running out. China’s breakneck development has concentrated on its densely populated eastern coast, thousands of hectares of marshes have disappeared in the spread of commercial territory. South Korea has killed off huge swathes of tidal mudflats in a decades old love affair with construction, as has Japan but with a head start uninterrupted by the Korean war. The more the neighbourhood is trashed, the more important Maipo becomes as a sanctuary. But surely one lesson of the flyway is that no wetland sanctuary exists in isolation. Maipo's ecology functions because other wetlands still survive, and it is shaped by the great migrations, including the epic hunt of the imperial eagle.

    The precise details of the great bird migrations are still little known, for the simple reason that it is very difficult to follow individual birds on their epic journeys. That’s why we don’t know where our imperials come from each year. We can make an educated guess that they could be Mongolian or Russian, but there would be no proof until we followed them. Though some clues can be gained tracking the prey that brings them to Hong Kong in the first place. 

     “The imperials are just eating other birds,” Bena Smith, WWF manager at Maipo told me. “Found one eating an egret yesterday, but they seem to like our duck too.” 

     Over two seasons the WWF management at Maipo took part in a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation satellite tracking study of migratory ducks. One of the reasons the UNFAO organised the study was to see what role, if any, wild birds took in the spread of the highly feared H5N1 bird flu virus. Bena Smith told me he was sceptical about the role of wildlife in spreading what he rightly called poultry flu, on the grounds that microbial studies identify the poultry industry as the source and incubator of the highly pathogenic forms of the virus. But he welcomed the study, partly because he just wanted to know where the ducks went, and partly because proof of their movements might clear the ducks' name as disease spreaders.

    Staff at Maipo attached tiny transmitters on 47 birds, and watched as the devices immediately started showing up on web-based tracking maps.

    One Northern Pintail took five months, starting in February, to fly from Hong Kong to the Arctic Circle, stopping along the way in China’s Yellow Sea region and the north eastern province of Heilongjiang. It stayed in Siberia for three months before heading southwards in September. From Eastern Russia it hopped over to Japan and then down to Southern China, returning to Maipo just in time for Christmas, after a 10,000 km round trip.

    Another tracking candidate, a Eurasian Wigeon, settled in North Korea for three months, on the border with the South, most likely inside the heavily mined Demilitarized Zone that separates the communist North from the capitalist South. This brings up an interesting point, the role of geo-politics in the preservation of wildlife. The Eurasian Wigeon is joined by the endangered blackfaced spoonbills in choosing the Korean DMZ as a resting, possible breeding, habitat. They are among some 3,000 wildlife species reported in the 4km wide, 250km long corridor of no-man’s land that separates the ideologically divided peninsula. Some environmentalists have even warned that the reunification of Korea would spell a disaster for the DMZ’s accidental biosphere. 

    Hong Kong’s Maipo has a surprisingly similar history, though not as nearly militarised. Its existence, and the existence an unspoiled wetland system that continues beyond the Ramsar protected site, is owed at least partly to what was called the Frontier Closed Area on Hong Kong’s northern boundary. The FCA was created by the British colonial regime in 1951 as a buffer against invasion from China, possibly by the military, but much more likely by ragged bands of illegal immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of people snuck over the border from mainland China, particularly during harsh political campaigns like the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s and the 10-year Cultural Revolution that began in the mid-1960s. The British overlords of the territory had an ambivalent attitude to the human tide. On the one hand they feared the colony would be swamped, and they could possibly lose control of the lucrative free trade port. On the other hand Hong Kong needed cheap labour to staff the manufacturing industries that fuelled the colony's growth.

    Chinese authorities on the other side of the border also had ambivalent attitudes. Emigration was effectively defection, and therefore deeply subversive. But on the other hand emigrants wired millions of dollars back home to their families, and remittances proved to be vital source of foreign currency for the then islolated regime. 

    So the British colonials came up with a hypocritical compromise that could only be invented by civil servants. In a policy that was informally known as "touch base", illegal immigrants would be turned away if they were caught in transit, but once they made it into the urban areas, and found accommodation, usually with relatives, they would be left to their own devices, which mostly meant taking up gainful employment in a factory.

    The FCA was a part of this compromise. It allowed the authorities to concentrate resources in one area, while ignoring the migrants who slipped past and melted into the workforce. Reports of illegal immigrants drowning in a bid to swim around the FCA, are made all the more tragic when you realise that they would have been given a chance to make a living if they'd reached the urban areas. 

    But the fact remains that the demarcation of the FCA was good for birds.  

    Villages that were inside the zone were frozen into a 1950s economy of shrimp farms and fish ponds. Their economic stasis was probably not particularly noticeable for the first couple of decades until developments started popping up in the New Territories. But the real explosion of growth came from the other side of the border, when former leader of China, Deng Xiaoping announced in 1979 that Communist China would have a go at capitalism in selected places, starting in the small fishing village of Shenzhen just on the other side of Maipo. From then on shrimp farmers in the FCA who had probably enjoyed relative wealth over their cousins across the river, could only watch in wonder as a mega-city grew from rice-paddies just a stone-throw away. Just 30 years later a city of 10 million bulges against the buffer zone.

    Every year for the past three-decades, imperial eagles have soared into Maipo within site of this growing mega-city. But even after Hong Kong’s 1997 return to mainland rule, the communist government maintained the territorial boundary, and kept the FCA closed. Thousands of birds packing the waterways of Maipo every year, continue to freely traverse the empty agricultural land well beyond the Ramsar protected site. Birdlife Inernational, the avian conservation group, recognises this de facto extension of Maipo’s formal boundary by listing an area about the same size as another Maipo, 1,500 hectares, as an Important Bird Area. Their justification for doing this is the simple fact that the same globally threatened birds, including eagles, imperial and greater spotted, that flock within the reserve boundary, regularly forage east along the beautifully undisturbed FCA. For now.

    The FCA remained in tact for the first decade of Hong Kong’s handover to China, but it is now being dismantled.  And many of the 9,000 or so remaining residents who watched Shenzhen explode into existence are expecting returns from what some people have called the “some of the the most valuable undeveloped real estate in the world.” Perhaps even more so, big developers are rubbing their hands with glee at such flat, strategic and unspoiled land. 

     One big chunk, called the Lok Ma Chau loop has already been earmarked a hi-tech education city that will house thousands of students and workers. It will cut right across the flight path of spoonbills, storks, and of course raptors in pursuit. The project is politically sensitive as it is hailed as major landmark in the economic and social integration between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, with investment pouring in from both sides of the border and much talk about partnership and joint development. 

    Maipo itself is promised protection as a nature reserve, but just as the health of the reserve is related to the health of wetlands in Korea, Taiwan and along the east coast of China, so it is it closely interwoven with its own back yard along the former FCA. Despite the large-scale development planned on the Lok Ma Chau loop, the Hong Kong government is at pains to explain its understanding of the special nature of the area, and of the value of conserving its unique environment. It has drawn up plans with the help of global construction giant ARUP, to show lovely cycle paths, and eco-lodges for tourists to enjoy unobstructed views of wild birds -- and Shenzhen. My fear is that in the rush for profits genuine ecological initiatives could easily be by-passed for superficial gimmicks -- like a pets corners for bunny huggers.

   The real conservation performance will be measured by biodiversity, including the number of endangered species that return to the area. And with the imperial eagle down to a single pair in some years, they will be a good indicator of Hong Kong’s performance on conservation.     

Three big birds - White bellied sea eagle

     

    I climbed a mountain one day and lay down on its peak, happy to rest after an arduous two-hour ascent. I watched kites soar above, large and sleek in easy flight, ruling the skies like a complacent oligarchy, until something different cut across their flight path, and dwarfed them. I didn’t know the distinctive under-view of a white-bellied sea eagle at that time, but a small amount of research told me that’s what it was. I went by size then to identify one of the region’s biggest birds of prey, with a wingspan that can reach 2.2 metres. I was awestruck, the massive bird crossing the path of lesser kites in a cloudless blue sky was an unforgettable sight. 

    Many years later I was amazed by the species again, though this time I had unimagined access to one in a completely unexpected place.

    I was walking to work on the Wanchai harbour front, which may sound nice if you don’t know Hong Kong, but in the years before the new government development it was a soulless jumble of badly planned ugly constructions of unrelated usage, spaced-out in lonely blocks, connected by tarmac, hideous iron fences and concrete. On the surface it has the biodiversity of a multi-storey car park in Abu-Dhabi, and the environmental charm of a caged golf driving range in suburban Tokyo. The white-bellied sea eagle was perched mysterious and god-like, on bamboo scaffolding that encapsulated the air vent of the Mass Transit Railway’s under-sea line to Kowloon.

    It wasn’t a sight I expected in Wanchai, in the shadow of the glass-walled Harbour View hotel, and a couple of blocks north of the city’s notorious girlie bars. But over the following six months I saw that bird two to three mornings a week, always perched on scaffolding, never in flight, never doing anything in particular, just sitting and shifting a bit from one piece of bamboo to another. I often wished it would open up its wings and give a display of eagle action, but I never had time to watch it for more than 5 minutes. I was always shuffling obediently to work.

    The white bellied sea eagle must be one of the most beautiful raptors in the world. Its grey and white two-tone uniform accents the perfectly honed body-form of a superior bird of prey. A powerful hooked beak juts from primeval eye sockets that direct its gaze forwards. From below, black flight feathers frame the diagnostic cruciform extending from its white breast and belly, wings tipped upward to form a V in flight.

In India (Photo: Gopal Vijayaraghaven Wikimedia Commons)

     Their hunt has been captured by numerous wildlife cameramen, resulting in a readily available archive of stunning footage. Their death dive and talon grab of sea-surface victim is perfect, almost. Perfect except for the half-held venomous sea snake that almost bit back as it thrashed mid air, until the climbing raptor managed to clamp its foot around the snake’s head.

    An estimated global population of 10,000 individuals is thinly spread along a vast archipelago of coastlines that stretch from India and Bangladesh, South China and the whole of southeast Asia, to Papua and the huge outline of Australia, including Tasmania. They form mostly monogamous partnerships, and stay put in territory they fiercely defend, often nesting for years in the same massive, but well hidden, eyrie that grows with each breeding season.

    Occasionally a rogue itinerant may try to break up a pair of lovers. And before you get sentimental about raptor monogamy, you should be aware that, just like with humans, adultery is not unknown. 

    An intrusion may lead to goose-like honking and physical confrontation. The battle begins high in the sky where challengers lock talons and hurl themselves into a spinning dive, forming a wheel that strains with accelerating centrifugal force, as it dangerously spirals towards ground. It appears that the first to let go is the looser, for being faint-hearted. I always assumed that recklessness was a uniquely human virtue, but it seems the sea eagles rate it too.

    The species is classed of least concern by the IUCN, but there are local populations throughout its range that are floundering under pressure from human encroachment. In recent years reports of shootings in the Philippines and Australia have highlighted the vulnerability of the species.

    In Hong Kong the population has held steady in recent  years at around 15 breeding paris, with  AFCD research suggesting an overall upward trend in the past decade. Nests are spread quite evenly in isolated corners of the territory, each pair giving the others a respectful distance. But there is a noticeable gap in the northwest, where a hundred thousand migratory birds flock each winter at the Maipo bird sanctuary, bringing with them a trail of foreign raptors. A disproportionate number of 17 identified nests in the last decade have been on small uninhabited islands, showing a clear liking for being nowhere near us. 

    But the full story is a little more complicated because they are attracted by some aspects of the built environment. The Wanchai eagle perched on its bamboo tree was one example, but there have also been reports of nests in man-made typhoon shelters and near piers amongst the throng of sea traffic. One pair nested on a pylon for high-voltage power lines, near a densely packed housing estate on the south side of Hong Kong island. The Hong Kong electric company erected netting around danger points to protect the birds, and even built an artificial nest at a nearby alternative location. It’s not clear what happened to the birds a year later, other than the fact that they stopped being spotted in the area. Let’s hope they found better homes before they were zapped.

    A similar situation in Queensland Australia a few years earlier led to the deployment of a crane to lift a 300 kg nest off a pylon and onto a purpose built nesting pole.

While nests near human habitats are not unknown, breeding studies indicate that they’re less likely to successfully reproduce in unfavourable locations. Not only that but in the past Hong Kong’s white-bellied sea eagles have been endangered by two-legged kleptoparasites, human egg collectors. One specialist told me that he thinks the collective memory of egg pinching in bygone years has influenced the species into hiding their nests in the remotest locations.

    

Photo by Mdk572 Wikimedia commons

While there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the white-bellied sea eagle’s outlook in Hong Kong, nothing can be taken for granted. Wildlife needs both habitat and food, and there are pressures on both fronts. Fish stocks in Hong Kong waters are notoriously depleted, with local fishermen having to cast their nets further away each year. Most of the fish swimming in tanks at sea food restaurants come from the Philippines and Indonesia. Closer to home eagle watchers have noted diminishing catches by the fishing raptors. 

    And remote nesting sites don’t stay remote forever. It is an indisputable fact that development is encroaching on further corners of the territory. How much this will affect eagle country depends on how the situation is managed. There is good evidence that eagles have already given way to new business ventures.  Not just those deemed a social necessity, such as the construction of new towns for a bulging population, but for leisure and entertainment, in the case of Disneyland.  

    When the American leisure park franchise came to Hong Kong an environmental assessment inconveniently discovered the only white-belly nesting site of Lantau island just a few hundred metres from the 1.8 billion dollar amusement park. The main issue for conservationists was not so much the presence of the park, but more the effect of the planned nightly fireworks and laser display. They warned that the disturbance could induce the birds to abandon the nest, eggs, fledglings and all.

    But Disney with its 316 million dollar stake, backed by the Hong Kong government with its 419 million dollar share, was very keen for the fireworks to go ahead. Lucky for the partners, relevant government department spokespeople only saw a “minor impact” to the birds. 

    The opening went ahead to great fanfare in 2005, and coincidentally the nesting birds failed to successfully breed in that location again.

    Disney’s apparent lack of interest in the fate of wild birds contrasted with their efforts to get the feng shui right. There is a lot of confusion about feng shui around the world. It literally means wind and water. Some people think it’s about luck and getting cash, others think it’s about a harmonious relationship with the environment. Either way Disney consulted some feng shui masters who told them to change the angle of an entrance gate, put bends on pathways to stop good luck slipping into the China Sea, and placed cash registers near corners where more wealth is likely to pour in. The Feng shui experts contracted by the park apparently saw no problem with nightly fireworks and laser shows that could disrupt the lives of a pair of rare and beautiful raptors.

    It took 7 years since opening for Disney investors to start feeling the effect of the feng shui when the park finally posted an annual profit in 2012, while the “minor impact” on the birds left an empty nest, a white-belly free Lantau, and scant information on where the eagles landed. 

    One expert I spoke to was reluctant to make a causal link between the events. But it is hard to ignore the fact that before Disney’s daily pyrotechnics rare eagles bred in the vicinity. Conservationists warned of the consequences, and Disney, backed by the Hong Kong government, ignored the warnings, and the birds moved away. So draw your own conclusions from that.

    Meanwhile in the months when the Wanchai eagle visited the MTR vent I craned my neck every morning to spot the bird as soon as the bamboo perch came into sight. Seeing or not seeing it could have a huge effect on my day. I was so resigned to the inevitability that such an anomaly couldn’t possibly continue, that every time it reappeared, it was like another fresh miracle, elation ensued. Should I be forced to explain what was the miracle, I’d be hard-put to say. I suppose it is something to do with witnessing the extraordinary against all the odds, in a built environment so detached from nature. But if the bird’s nonchalant body language meant anything, it seemed to be saying, “So what?”

    Eventually the MTR corporation finished repainting the vent, and the bamboo scaffolding came down. The eagle never landed in that spot again. But since then it has reappeared in the neighbourhood intermittently, normally in the winter months, sometimes perched at the top of the nearby Hong Kong academy of performing arts. It could have been the same one I saw a mile or so along the harbour soaring over Green Island with its wings angled into a shallow V, perhaps eyeing egret chicks on the busy hatchery below. When its darkened silhouetted body tilted on a wide arc the sunlight caught its chest feathers, and lit them up into a flash of white, the unmistakable cruciform framed by black flight feathers.

Three big birds -- Kites

Photo © Emilie Pavey http://www.landofnocheese.com/

     

     If you are reading this in Hong Kong, look up and take-in the big brown bird of prey soaring majestically in a piece of sky near you. In winter you might see half a dozen at once, stacked up on thermals, effortlessly rising on invisible spiraling tracks. They hang like military spy-drones, watching our every move. One may peel off, shooting downwards like a dart hurled from above, until a subtle lilt of the tail tips it into a graceful curve around a block of flats.

    They are kites, with 1.5 metre wingspans, and they thrive in this city. They navigate the gleaming tower blocks of the business district just as comfortably as they fly over lush forests and deep green valleys. They are called black kites here, but they have also been called black-eared kites, and milvus migrans by Latin enthusiasts. 

    Bird experts say the species is the planet’s most numerous raptor. Its range stretches from western Europe, through Asia, down to Australia, taking in Africa, and both central and south Asia. But Hong Kong is one of the best places to view these master flyers. It isn’t just that they are common here, both the geological and the urban topography present kite-spotters with perfect viewing platforms.

    I am one of the worker-drones of the city who sits in a sky-scraper during the day, in an office perched 300 metres above ground. It is in a building that appears in postcards showing one of the world’s most recognisable skylines. Next time you see a picture like that look carefully for little brown specs in the sky. They’ll be the kites. They swoop our floor-to-ceiling windows, hugging an air corridor that wraps around the exterior. That is when you realise that these are big, hooked-beaked, talon-footed hunters. 

    For most people in Hong Kong, sitting in a high-rise office is the closest they get to these birds. The species has adapted successfully to human colonisation of the globe, but they know enough about us to keep their distance.

    Hong Kong's kite population fluctuates through the year, with a few hundred permanent residents occupying strategic valleys and prime nesting spots. Their numbers swell every winter when some 3,000 birds migrate from the north, according to Dr Yip Chi Lap of the kite research group of the Hong Kong birdwatching society. We don't know where they come from, as tracking studies are yet to be done, but it’s reckoned that central Asia would be good bet.

    Although these raptors will go for live prey, perhaps their real success comes from their blatant opportunism. They appear to have done well from human society, and it is tempting to speculate that they might have followed us throughout history. An English bird watcher in 1891 wrote that kites were tolerated in towns because they were useful as “sanitary officers.” He was referring to red kites, but our Latin enthusiasts would acknowledge them as a close relative, whose behaviour overlaps a lot with Hong Kong’s black kites. On a visit back to Yorkshire this summer I saw a red kite soaring above the town of Harrogate, its silhouette and movement was identical to Hong Kong’s black kites that are much more familiar to me.

    

Photo © Emilie Pavey http://www.landofnocheese.com/

Here they are known to skim dead fish off the sea surface, scavenge on offal and road kills, and even pinch meat from open market stalls. They prefer to keep their hunting to situations where the odds are firmly in their favour, seeking sick, young or injured targets. They will also eat small mammals, frogs, lizards and insects. And they have been caught indulging in kleptoparasitism – otherwise known as pinching food from other animals. But I’ve seen smaller kleptoparistes, spangled drongos, hassling kites in return.

    They also have a record for straightforward kleptomania, with a fondness for white manmade objects that they use to pad out their nests. Dr Yip has recorded pieces of cloth, plastic bags, workers gloves and clothes hangers in kite nests. I’ve seen a white tea towel hanging from the upper branches of a local tree used by a big kite, by far the most likely agent to have stolen and transported it there. 

    In Japan I have seen kites dive-bomb people to steal food out of their hands, though I haven’t seen the behaviour in Hong Kong.

    Hong Kong environmental expert Dr Martin Williams told me that kites here take up an ecological position that in other places would be occupied by sea gulls. They work the harbour, often following fishing vessels home to port, much as gulls do elsewhere. In most parts of the territory we don’t see many sea gulls in places they would be expected.

    The same birds in Australia have been seen eating dead cane toads. The bulky invasive amphibians would generally be run-over and flattened on their stomachs, but the kites have learned to avoid the notorious poison secreted from the back of the toad, by flipping the carcass and exposing the soft flesh of the underbelly. It is interesting to note that while Australia is a vast continent offering endless space for wildlife, kites are generally found in and around towns. 

    But the opportunists will leave town to follow a plague of locusts, or seek a good bushfire, according to Aussie wildlife watchers. The birds will stalk smoke to find the frontline of a fire, and pick off wildlife fleeing the flames. Australian folklore has it that kites will even pick up burning twigs from one bushfire to start a new one elsewhere, unlikely to be true but a nice expression of respect for kite cunning. In Hong Kong I’ve seen a piece of footage showing large numbers circling over hill fires, stacked high on smoky thermals, scouring the flaming edge of the blaze. There would be no need for kites to light blazes themselves here, most of the frequent hill fires are started accidentally by people burning offerings at gravesides in a practice lamented by firemen, but no-doubt watched in anticipation by gathering crowds of kites.

    Kites are unusual for being a gregarious species of raptor, often working together to find food and clear the neighbourhood of unwanted rivals.  A European study on their spring migration north noted huge flocking behaviour before crossing water. They mass in the skies of North Africa before making the crossing over the Mediterranean in a dark cloud of raptors. 

    I ran into hundreds of the large hunters, in an abandoned quarry near my home. They were reluctant to give ground to me, and I realised I was trespassing. They perched on fencing, lined up like avian pirates, shoulders big and hunched, ragged feathers adding to their swaggering profile. Each one sat 60 to 70 cm tall. They would let me come to within 5 metres, before lunging back to keep distance, and I saw their bulk, their claws and their piercing eyes. I turned my head to the sky and saw up to a hundred circling me, studying my movements. Collectively they could have shredded me, but luckily they don’t seem to know that.

Black kite (photo: Felix Wong borrowed from SCMP Young Post online ed)

    Another time I saw kites guarding their patch against remote-controlled gliders. I was on top of a breezy hill, looking down at the sea and across to the south side of Hong Kong island. Three blokes sat on rocks fiddling their control units, guiding their aerobatic toys on thermals and wind pockets, not without some impressive displays of skill. But high above them there were three kites, lodged in aerial clutch-control against a headwind, hawk-eyes locked on to plastic pretenders invading their airspace. One of the flimsy models wrongly banked into a gust, and crashed out of view into a distant bush, an action accompanied by a mournful groan from its owner. All the while the kites held their position, impassively watching amateur man’s clumsy efforts to master flight by proxy.

    Closer to home, I saw local kites harassing a migrant buzzard.  I live in a flat at the head of a small valley occupied year round by a family of kites. It is agricultural land half gone to seed in recent decades, as local people abandon traditional farming practices. The result is a mini-haven for birds, crowned at the head of the valley by two magnificent trees whose canopies merge. At any one time there are dozens of birds in those branches, all chattering and foraging like people at a thriving market. The kites nest here and patrol the valley from their prime vantage point. 

    Yet a buzzard appeared one winter and stayed for several weeks. The kites took pot shots when they could, with mid-air chases and swooping dive-bombs, and the buzzard always backed off. But the plucky visitor kept sneaking back, impervious to punishment meted out by bullying locals. Ultimately the kites didn’t seem that interested in spending a whole lot of energy against the foreign raptor. For now it seemed, there was just about enough room for tense co-existence in the small valley. Other raptors make an occasional visit. A crested goshawk bagged a prime perch overlooking the whole valley for a week or so one year, and another rusty-breasted hawk or falcon that I failed to identify sat on a pole in the middle, scanning for prey.

    But flat rentals are lucrative, and landowners are deliberately degrading land zoned for agriculture. Plots of rich plant life disappear overnight as small-time developers dump construction waste, citing loopholes in zoning regulations. It is a well-known strategy in Hong Kong for rezoning land for construction, claiming loss of agricultural value since the land has been trashed. Raise the conservation issued and they’ll tell you that we’ve got plenty of kites, who cares if they go? Well, kites won’t be the ones to go anyway, the buzzards and goshawks and other visitors including those that don’t reveal themselves for an easy ID will be the first ones to be permanently chased off. The kites will likely adapt, look at their dive-bombing cousins in Japan.

Coffee, perfume and pandemics - part 2

      If you don't like the thought of drinking excrement coffee, you could always eat the whole cat. That's what a lot of people used to do in Guangdong province, at least until 2003 when a lethal and highly contagious disease that became known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) emerged in South China and killed 800 people across the world in the space of a few months. The mysterious disease hit hard in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), but the coincidence of the acronym was bitterly resented in the territory that has more than once acted as a warning beacon to diseases emerging from mainland China. It took several months and hundreds of deaths before the finger was pointed at civet cats in Guangdong’s notorious animal markets.

     Months earlier, in February 2003, the World Health Organization office in Beijing had received an email about an unidentified disease that had left more than 100 people dead in Guangdong province within a week. By the middle of February the Chinese Ministry of Health admitted to the WHO that something nasty had emerged, but they said only five people had died, and whatever it was, it was coming under control. In reality a global epidemic was just warming up.
     On February 21 a doctor from Guangdong province checked into a room on the ninth floor of the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. He died in Hong Kong within two weeks, as did a Canadian tourist who checked out of the same hotel and headed back to Toronto. By the time he died, five people in Toronto were showing symptoms. Two others who had stayed on the ninth floor of the Metropole were sick in Hong Kong, while another person started showing symptoms in Vietnam.

     It was clear that a vicious disease had been unleashed but no one knew what it was. Panic spread like a contagious infection when healthcare workers started falling sick one after another.

    By the end of March thousands of people in Toronto were under quarantine, and in Hong Kong hundred had been hospitalized, including 213 residents of a single housing estate called the Amoy Gardens.

    In April the WHO issued its most stringent travel advisory in its 55-year history -- don't go to Hong Kong or Guangdong province. Total cases passed 2,000 and a Morgan Stanley economist estimated that the global cost of the outbreak so far to be around US$30 billion.

Beijing station 2003 (photo:WSJ)

      In mid-April the WHO announced that the mystery virus was a coronavirus, more familiar to vets than human doctors, but this one was of a type never seen before in animals or humans.  Retail sales in Hong Kong were down 50 percent from a month earlier, and restaurant takings were down by 80 percent.

     It was a depressing and eerie time to be living and working in Hong Kong, as I was.

     It was in late May that masked palm civets in Guangdong markets were first linked to the virus. Infection had appeared to slow down by then, but the toll continued to rise. A Hong Kong university team was among the first to confirm that traces of a coronavirus “very similar” to human infections of SARS was found in the faeces of caged civets at crowded animal markets.  

    Hong Kong banned the import of civet meat immediately, and the mainland started culling captives. Some Guangdong districts upped the killings to stray dogs and cats too, especially cats because people wrongly assumed a zoological connection in the name.

    

Photo: HKU Faculty of Medicine

It is easy to cull civets in the mainland because thousands are farmed, ironically for the "wild meat" trade. The meat is an expensive delicacy with a flavour described as fruity by some, gamey by others, and with purported medical benefits such as the inevitable stimulation of the libido.

     The Cantonese are proud of their wildlife cuisine, and amongst their famous dishes the Dragon Tiger Phoenix soup is still prized today, more than six years after the civet cull, as a local specialty. The dish translates to real animals as snake, civet and chicken, although since the ban kittens are said to have taken the place of civets.

    SARS cases dropped off by the end of 2003, but after a handful of late infections around the New Year Guangdong went into another killing campaign, announcing the destruction of 10,000 civet cats. Civet catchers raided dark and stinking markets in hazard suits, and carted off the caged mammals to be drowned in pools of disinfectant. 

     Animal rights groups and environmental campaigners raised a stink from the start but Chinese authorities, much maligned for their secrets and lies in the early stages of the disease, were now determined to stamp it out. And if that meant stamping out civets, so be it. In any case all the captives were already condemned to the cooking pot so what was the difference?

    

Research chase the SARS virus (photo WHO)

     But even the WHO called restraint in the war on civets. The problem was that no one had proved whether civets had infected people, or people had infected them. Or worse still was another party involved?

    "For all we know they could be an intermediary carrier," said a WHO representative in China.  Six years on we think they were.

    Horseshoe bats are another south China delicacy, even their faeces have medicinal value according to traditional medicine. They were found in cages near civet cats in the infamous Guangdong markets and more than a year after the 10,000 cat cull, virologists determined that these flying mammals were the real reservoir spieces for the disease, though the virus didn't pass from them directly to people.

    One of two things happened, which would shed different light on the civet cull. Either bats infected another animal that infected humans before we passed it to civets, and therefore the cull was useless. Or else bats infected civets who in turn passed the disease on to people.

    A 2006 study on the evolution of the virus, sponsored by the United States’ Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) concluded that civets must have been infected by humans. But other studies have put it the other way round, not only did civets get infected before humans but they acted as amplifiers for the virus, so they did deserve to die.

    Either way there have been hardly any cases of SARS since 2004.

    Whatever we eventually conclude about the transmission of SARS, it's clear that human built markets were a vital processing point for the virus, where cages of bats sat next to civet cats, both handled by sweaty, grimy people. 

     There is a good chance that in a healthy environment, South China's wild meat cuisine is wholesome, and perhaps even good for you, as traditional medicine practitioners claim. But that's a big if in a densely populated part of the world where economic pressures have seriously depleted the natural environment. Not only that, but "wild" is a misnomer when applied to animals intentionally bred for the market. 

    Ultimately it's not really the animals that spread disease, it's the economy that throws all of us too close together and forces a prolonged and intense interaction between species. And as China gets wealthier, the newly rich look to traditional templates to help them decide what to do with their spare cash. So more and more people partake in exotic cuisines and medicines, stimulating the market further, intensifying human contact with strange beasts. 

    The surprising thing is that the events of 2003 and 2004 didn't force the masked palm civet to local extinction. Hong Kong didn't take part in the cull, as AFCD recognised that our shy forest dwellers were never likely to come close enough to human populations to infect them with anything. And in the mainland, whilst authorities were prepared to round up captive beasts in markets, they didn't have the resources to send hunting parties into the forests. So the wild civets survived despite the premium that would have been put on their heads by slashing supply in the markets. Intermittent reports of crackdowns in the mainland show that the meat trade has continued too.

    No doubt completely oblivious to the huge impact it had made on the world, the species continues to make a quiet living in the heart of Hong Kong, to the delight of at least one elderly historian and his posh neighbours. 

Great drawing lifted from an aromatherapy website offering dodgy looking civet essential oils in amber glass bottle.