观鸟者韩联宪 | Birdwatcher Han Lianxian

Most of those who have ever come in contact with Han Lianxian probably believe that he has the ability to understand and speak with birds.

One spring morning, I met Han Lianxian in the family community of Southwest Forestry University. The luxuriant bamboo bushes were rustling with the breeze and several birds were singing crisply across. "Have you noticed these birds singing? Can you hear the azure-winged magpie? It is not native to Yunnan, but introduced from Beijing in the mid-1980s, and kept in captivity in Kunming Zoo until 1991, when 19 birds were released successively. In the first 10 years, they only lived in Yuantong Hill, but over time expanded to the surrounding communities. Now, they can be found in parks, around Dianchi Lake and even in Ning'er county and Dali City. The spread of the azure-winged magpie also shows that people are becoming more and more aware of ecological protection," Han explained.

Han Lianxian, a professor of zoology at Southwest Forestry University, a well-known Chinese bird expert, and secretary general of Yunnan Wildlife Conservation Association, has been engaged in ornithological research for 40 years. With all his experience, he is able to tell the species of birds and their stories by just hearing them. Besides, Han himself is a man with stories.

As a child, he lived in the mountainous area of Western Hunan where nature and birds were his best friends. After graduating from middle school, he worked as an educated youth and a railway worker. In the years of working as an educated youth, whether in the early morning, the silent night or during his working time, he was always accompanied by birdsong. In his spare time, Han always loved looking up at the trees and the mountains. He would stare at the birds flying from tree to tree, or even climb up the trees to observe birds of prey nesting and see their eggs hatching and spend the whole day doing so. Later, as a railway worker, his love for birds remained. During each of his staggered holidays, he would either follow the railway line or stroll in the countryside near the station to see whether he could find birds that he had never seen before.

After the resumption of the college entrance examination, the man from West Hunan became a graduate student in ornithology at Kunming Institute of Botany in 1982. During his postgraduate study, he often went to Dianchi Lake, which became one of his "bases" for bird research.

From 2011 to 2021, Han's team monitored winter waterfowl in Dianchi Lake. "According to our surveys in recent years, there are more than 130 bird species in Dian Lakefront, and the number of waterfowl is almost reaches 100,000 at most. Of course, the black-headed gull, an old friend of the Kunming people, is the most common, but there are also a few rare bird species."

Han recalled that from the late 1990s, China began to pay attention to the protection of wetlands. In the early 21st century, many wetland parks were built around Dianchi Lake in Kunming. The increased water area and the effective protection of the lakeside zone have provided preferable habitats for the birds, and the appearance of birds such as the purple swamphen, glossy ibis and Baer's pochard is the best proof of that.

Known as the most beautiful waterfowl in the world, the purple swamphen, a relatively rare wading bird in China and ClassII wildlife under special state protection, is listed as a vulnerable species in the Red List of China’s Vertebrates. In 2018, the purple swamphen was first spotted by the public in Dongdahe Wetland in Jinning District, and then photographed on the south bank of Dianchi Lake in 2021.

In an interview, Han explained that around the year 2000, the purple swamphen was endangered in the entire Asian region. However, owing to more than a decade of continuously strengthening the protection of Dianchi Lake, the fast-breeding purple swamphen has slowly spread southward from the wetlands of Jianchuan County and Eryuan County in Dali to the Longchuan and Tengchong areas; while some of them have spread eastward and returned to Dianchi Lake.

A world-class endangered species, the Baer's pochard, has appeared in the National Wetland Park in South of Dianchi Lake, Jinning District; the rare Eurasian wryneck was observed in Xihua Wetland; the Eurasian woodcock is difficult to observe, due to its hidden habits; the glossy ibis was spotted in Dongchuan district and the southern bank of Dianchi Lake in recent years; rare waterfowl such as the garganey, common shelduck, ruddy Shelduck and white-browed crake, which had been gone for decades, have returned. All of this is evidence of the ecological improvement of Kunming and the effective governance of Dianchi Lake. "We have done a survey on biodiversity conservation in Dianchi Lake Basin. A total of 311 species of birds were recorded in the 2000-square-kilometer Dianchi Lake Basin. The emergence of rare birds has also attracted bird lovers from all over the country," Han said.

Han explained that Yunnan has three characteristics in terms of species and number of birds. First, it is the province with the largest number of birds in China. Second, animal species shows north-south intersection and east-west intermixing, due to Yunnan’s special geographical location. Third, the number of unique birds in Yunnan is the highest of all provinces and regions in China. Among the birds recorded in China, 114 species, such as the little cormorant, river tern, Hodgson's frogmouth and great hornbill, can only be found in Yunnan.

The population of birds is increasing with the continuous improvement of the ecological environment. Han explained that "In the case of the black-necked crane, government authorities, in cooperation with Chinese scholars, have taken a lot of protective measures. For example, a series of nature reserves of different levels have been established in the breeding and wintering grounds of black-necked cranes, such as the Xundian Black-necked Crane Provincial Nature Reserve, which was established in Xundian County, Kunming. In the mid-1990s, experts found more than 3,000 overwintering black-necked cranes in the Lhasa River Valley and Yajiang Valley near Lhasa. Together with those wintering on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, the total number was estimated to more than 5,000. By 2015, the number had doubled to 11,000. According to the National Crane Synchronous Survey in January 2022, the number of black-necked cranes was 17,000." As Han mentions, the overall improvement of the ecological environment is inevitably related to the reproduction of birds.

The Convention on Biological Diversity has three main purposes, namely, the protection of biodiversity, the sustainable use of biodiversity, and the equitable and reasonable sharing of the benefits of biodiversity genetic resources. Han believes that it is highly consistent with the concept of "conservation and development in parallel" advocated by the Chinese government.

"COP15 in Kunming is a good publicity opportunity for China, Yunnan and Kunming to show the world what China is doing to preserve biodiversity. It can also make the people of Yunnan realize the urgency of biodiversity conservation, which will enable us to do a better job in this regard," said Han.