Which part of Thailand has the most species
of birds? And where can the greatest number of rare and threatened
birds be found? The answer is not Huai
Kha Khaeng, Kaeng Krachan,
Khao Yai or any
other extensive wilderness as you might suppose. In both cases,
the answer is "Right here, on Bangkok's doorstep!"
Such a counterintuitive statement deserves qualification.
One should not seek to directly compare say, Huai Kha Khaeng,
which supports mainly forest birds, including hornbills and
green peafowl, with the Bangkok area, which supports more
waterbirds and migratory species. This is comparing chalk
and cheese: Both sites, in their own way, are equally important
in the national biodiversity conservation picture. But whereas
the wildlife importance of, say, Huai Kha Khaeng is already
recognised, that of the Bangkok area is not.
The Lower Chao Phraya Delta, a 20,000km2 expanse of mainly
rice paddies, with the mega-city of Bangkok slap bang in the
middle, and extending to the coastline of the inner gulf,
is one of the greatest wetlands in Southeast Asia. Recognised
as an IBA (Important Bird Area) by BirdLife
International, it is the single area most deserving of
urgent conservation attention, yet it is largely ignored by
those government officials whose jobs supposedly concern them
with biodiversity conservation.
The Bangkok area holds some of the rarest birds in the world
- for instance, the enigmatic Spoon-billed Sandpiper, which
breeds at the far tip of Arctic Northeast Asia, and flies
to winter on salt pans and coastal mudflats on Southeast Asia.
Its global population has declined by 80 to 90 per cent in
the past 20 years and only 600 to 1,000 individuals remain,
at most. Ask any globe-trotting bird-lister the best place
in the world to see Spoon-billed Sandpipers, and he will unhesitatingly
give you the name of a salt-farming cooperative a few kilometres
from the booming fishing port and industrial centre of Samut
Sakhon. Khok Kham,
and its local conservation club - the guardians of their traditional
salt-farming lifestyle - are world-renowned, thanks to the
Spoon-billed Sandpiper, which finds a safe haven there. Altogether,
the Lower Chao Phraya Delta holds at least 21 threatened and
near-threatened birds, and another 40 species for which the
numerical concentrations are internationally important.
The connection between the freshwater hinterland, and the
brackish water coastal strip in Samut Prakan, Samut Sakhon
and neighbouring Samut Songkhram provinces has been irrevocably
severed by an ugly and chaotic sprawl of industry and barracks-like
housing along the arterial roads leading in and out of Bangkok.
But further west, in more rural Phetchaburi, the gradual transition
from inland freshwater marshland and rice paddy and the brackish
flats, ponds, salt pans and mudflats of the coastal zone remains
uninterrupted, rendering this area of unique interest. With
its lower human population density, rice paddies, scattered
farms and hamlets, groves of sugar palms interrupted by the
occasional glittering temple roof, it is an area of bucolic
splendour and serenity. This a mega-destination for birds
and birdwatchers alike, supporting tens (if not hundreds)
of thousands of waterbirds for much of the year. Besides Painted
Storks and Asian Openbills, Indian Cormorants, egrets and
Spot-billed Pelicans, there are large flocks of smaller, insectivorous
birds including pipits and wagtails. Hundreds of pairs of
Oriental Pratincoles - actually a waterbird, but one with
short legs and bill, which makes its living by hawking flying
insects - lay their eggs on dry-baked, post-harvest mud-soil
of the ricefields during the hottest months of March and April.
Incredibly, at least four species of eagles - the globally
threatened Greater Spotted and Imperial Eagles, the Steppe
Eagle and Booted Eagle also frequent rice paddies around Phetchaburi,
along with other predatory birds including several hundred
Black Kites and a few tens of Eastern Marsh Harriers and Pied
Harriers.
These hawks and eagles are highly migratory, and the habitat
they seek out when fleeing the snowy winters of their Central
and North Asian breeding areas is single crop rice-paddy in
Thailand's Lower Central Plain. Where the ricefields remain
fallow for a few months after the single crop is harvested
in the early dry season, the food web is uninterrupted. A
diverse array of herbaceous plants among the harvested rice
stubble sustains many insects, which provide food for frogs,
small reptiles and small insectivorous birds. These, together
with rats and other small mammals, are in turn consumed by
the many predatory birds, while ricefield crabs and small
fish in ditches provide abundant food for waterbirds. The
productivity of the system is also enhanced by the dung of
grazing animals - cows and buffaloes - that are turned out
to roam on the fields after harvest.
This used to be true of ricefields throughout Thailand's Central
Plain, but in recent years, the pattern of growing rice has
been stood on its head. Most areas are now within reach of
irrigation schemes, while better flood control means that
rice can be readied for harvest more rapidly. Instead of a
single crop, planted during the wet season and harvested in
December or January, now two or three crops of high yield
rice - chemicals replacing the fertiliser that nature used
to provide for free through the medium of nutrient-rich silts
deposited by floodwaters - are grown. No sooner is one crop
harvested than another is planted, and there is no longer
any fallow period.
Multi-cropped, irrigated rice now occupies over half of the
rice-growing area of the Central Plains. The uninterrupted
emerald expanse may look easy on the eye, but in reality it
is a sterile, pesticide and herbicide-laced "poison green"
biological wasteland. It produces food for humans, but very
little else.
The evidence for the effects of changing agricultural land
use on birds is clear. Roughly 20 years ago, before rice-multi-cropping
had completely supplanted traditional mono-cropping around
Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani, roosts of hundreds of black kites,
and a few greater spotted eagles could even be found in sugar
palms near the Pathum Thani Bridge, on the northern outskirts
of Bangkok. These concentrations have long since vanished.
Even the numbers of small insect-eating birds such as long-tailed
shrikes and black drongos have plummeted in the past 25 years,
and their decline has been tracked as the food web that used
to sustain them has collapsed. High diversity ricefields and
their bird fauna are now confined to a few shrinking areas
of mono-cropping around the margins of the Central Plains,
in Prachinburi to the east and Phetchaburi to the west.
The key point about the Bangkok area is that the survival
of the most endangered and sensitive birds depends upon traditional
forms of land use that have been in place for hundreds of
years. Salt pans and traditional, shallow prawn-capture ponds
provide high-tide loafing and feeding areas for spoon-billed
sandpipers and a host of other shorebirds; the largest, least
disturbed ponds support spot-billed pelicans, painted storks
and other larger waterbirds; while single-crop rice paddies
support a diverse array of predatory and insectivorous birds.
None of these bird species is represented in significant numbers
in any of Thailand's national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
They are betrayed by our lack of any comprehensive nature
conservation policy.
Wetlands and some farmlands have retained their conservation
value because traditional patterns of use have evolved gradually,
shaping the land over centuries. This is well recognised in
Europe where, once the role of traditional land-use systems
in maintaining wildlife populations and unique landscapes
was recognised, it has often proved possible to regulate present-day
land use through management agreements, legislation or financial
incentives.
A strong case can be argued for likewise preserving the human-modified
wetland habitats of Thailand's Central Plains. Rice mono-cropping
in the freshwater zone, salt-farming in the coastal zone and
other traditional forms of land use that sustain biodiversity,
could be maintained through agricultural subsidies, to safeguard
not only wildlife but also the quality of life of the human
inhabitants.
Before you snort with derision over the impossibility of instituting
such a system in Thailand, consider first how much taxpayers'
money is wasted by the central government, by province and
tambol administrative organisations, local and national politicians,
on frivolous and unnecessary construction projects such as
grandiose buildings, tourist facilities that are never used,
roads that are much wider than needed and which crumble into
potholes during the first monsoon season. Why? Because leakage
of money from ceaseless construction projects provides patronage
- the grease that oils the wheels of Thailand's political
machine. More construction means more money entering the system:
It is as simple as that. Construction projects are the means
by which the politicians extract money from taxpayers in order
to boost their own election prospects.
Wouldn't it make more sense to use some of this money to sustain
traditional land use rather than spending it ceaselessly building,
building, building?
As a signatory of the International Convention on Wetlands
(the Ramsar Convention), the Thai government is already legally
obliged to integrate wetland conservation into its national
and land-use planning, and to promote and implement so-called
"wise use" or sustainable use of wetlands: This
means all wetlands, not just protected areas. Up to now this
provision of the wetland convention has been ignored. Rice
paddies are wetlands too, albeit wetlands that are modified
from their original state. They support globally threatened
species, and it is therefore grossly negligent of the government
to fail to implement measures that would offer these habitats
a measure of protection.
At the present time, anybody (more or less) can build anything,
no matter how inappropriate, anywhere they choose, provided
they have sufficient money. This cannot be allowed to go on.
Thailand urgently needs to implement zoning legislation that
takes account of biodiversity and landscape values of rural
areas, and imposes some restrictions on land use. This is
not just a matter of safeguarding aesthetic and conservation
values; it also makes good economic sense. There will not
be enough money in the whole of the national budget to defend
Thailand's Central Plain against the effects of flooding caused
by rising sea levels due to global warming in the future.
Why spend money protecting buildings in inappropriate, flood-prone
locations when they should never have been built in the first
place?
Additionally, although farmers may prefer to grow dry season
irrigated rice as the sale price is higher, this practice
is not sustainable. It places unreasonable demands on scant
water resources: There is just not enough water to go around.
Increased costs for labour, agrochemicals and diesel undo
any short term benefits reaped by farmers from increased global
demand for rice. Ultimately small rice farmers may be forced
into selling their land to developers in order to pay off
their debts.
Subsidising rice farmers to return to a single, rain-fed cropping
pattern in all but those areas most accessible to irrigation
would both relieve demand for water and benefit biodiversity,
while at the same time sustain rural communities. It would
help maintain the diverse rural culture of the Siamese heartland
while at the same time enable the Thai government to live
up to its international obligations under the Ramsar Convention.
How can you help? Join the Bird Conservation Society of
Thailand, which is the national partner of the million-strong
worldwide alliance BirdLife International. For details, see
the society's web site at http://www.bcst.or.th
or call 02-691-5976. |
The
Birds of the Bangkok Area
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