thomaslegg

I'm sure if asked Martin Williams would provide a few words on the impact of FEHD's all-out mosquito fogging campaign on Cheung Chau, but the program isn't limited to Cheung Chau. I've watched a significant portion of my patch here on Peng Chau be poisoned by the indiscriminate fogging of pesticide in land zoned Green Belt.

I've noticed common species of insect eating birds, like ETSparrows and Crested Myna, being pushed to the far points of the island in search of insects where I'd never seen them. This puts them in direct competition with birds like the Black Drongos that come here in numbers to breed over the summer and use the more forested area, when the Sparrows and Myna should be down in the urban area or on the beach. In addition to the dislocation of birds, the numbers of other common birds are down significantly, like White-eyes. And beyond the birds the spraying has damaged the populations of insects and small vertebrates, especially the mosquito eaters, which has resulted in the Bounce Back of mosquitoes in the sprayed areas, which causes FEHD to spray more insecticide without any attempts to clean up all of the stagnant water buckets along the hill.

Incompetence resulting in ecological damage without any long-term movement on eliminating mosquitoes.