On my first visit to Hong Kong six years ago, I was surprised not so much by the bright lights, buildings or crowds. Rather, it was that amid the bright lights, buildings and crowds, a monkey managed to clamber through the busy Tsim Sha Tsui district in Kowloon, board a cross-harbor ferry, and arrive in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong Island. It took animal control officers two days to track down the 4-year-old macaque and capture him.
Such wild intrusions into the bustle of Hong Kong life occur with amazing regularity. Last year a woman’s 50 lb. husky was killed by a python in a Hong Kong country park. And last week, a wild boar was found with its head stuck in a fence along a road in an industrial district of Hong Kong’s New Territories. The most famous wild visitor was a 5-foot crocodile that evaded capture for months in 2003 and 2004. The creature, which is not native to Hong Kong, was moved to a wetland park last year.
Among the native residents, there is incredible diversity. Hong Kong has more tree species than Western Europe. There is even a species of frog that exists here and nowhere else. Last summer I spoke with Markus Shaw, chairman of WWF Hong Kong, who gave the city fairly good marks for preservation of species, at least on land. He notes that 40% of Hong Kong’s land area is preserved in the form of parks. But just 2% of the surrounding waters enjoy similar protection. The group he heads has made that their next big campaign.
In February researchers published the first encyclopedia of local flora in nearly a century. They compiled 3,000 species, double the 1912 edition. The increase was due in part to species that were once scarce due to habitat destruction, but had flourished as forests were increasingly preserved, one of the authors told the South China Morning Post. It seems like a hopeful sign about the ability to repair environmental damage if people act in time. That would be true not just for Hong Kong but the rest of China as well.