HFCheung

I went to sit in a meeting to discuss the establishment of a new geological park in Eastern NT.  At first instance it seems it is not much related to birds.  But after the meeting, I think there are potentially great troubles for the Terns.

First I support the idea of establishing a Geological Park.  From what I heard, the whole ecological system will be protected as well.

Then, the proposed management structure is the existing Country Park and Marine Park structure.  This is to speed up the legislation process.

Third, a limited number of sites are included in the new park.  8 sites have been listed, but the details within the sites are still unknown.

The relation to breeding birds:
1. Breeding birds such as Terns and White-bellied Sea Eagle will be affected by this plan.
2. The traditional Tern Islands are not included in the proposed sites.
3. High Island reservoir and ninepins are included.  These are active and historic breeding site for Terns.

Potential Conflicts between stakeholders:
I realized during the meeting that the Marine Park management structure would prohibited fishing from the shore.  So if the majority of the Sai Kung coast line is in the new geological park, then shoreline fisherman would have much less places to catch their fish.  The result would be that they would fish in the remaining places.  If for geological reasons, the Tern Islands are not included in the park, then the human pressure on the Tern Islands would increase greatly.  Based on the sub-standard measures of AFCD to protect these Tern Islands, I think that would be a major disaster to the Tern Islands.  May be the best solution is for the government to include the Tern Islands in the new geological park, then by suitable controlling the visitors, Terns and WB Sea Eagle can still breed happily in HK.

HF Cheung

thinfor

I agree.  Before being a birder, I have joined some local hiking teams and they regularly visit many islands and uninhabited places in HK, including the Tern islands.  Now they have been known that this is not a good act and as far as I am concerned they just visit the island on water without landing.  

I think it's a good idea to include the tern islands such that the protection is more complete.  It's not making any sense if we protect the geographical location and features but ignore and neglect the wildlife living there.  If we want to protect the environment, we protect as a whole.

HKSAR government often proposes something that aims to protect our HK countryside but somehow their ideas are always just biased to how this can generate profit or income to the government.  I hope this time the government can be got back to the right track to setup this kind of 'theme parks'.

tbob

I believe that besides High Island (Po Pin Chau)and The Nine Pins Group that have already been mentioned, the islands to be included are Wang Chau, Basalt Island, Bluff Island, Sharp Island (Kiu Tsui Chau), Port Island, Tung Ping Chau, Ma Shi Chau, the Double Haven area, Tolo Channel (Lai Chi Chong) are on the list.

Maybe if the Society comes up with a list of islands they suggest to be included it could be incorporated into the overall plan