Its most important ecological feature is as a habitat for migratory
birds as they travel the Asian Flyway, stretching from Siberia and
northern China to Australia. According to Lew Young, the reserve's
manager, Mai Po provided at least temporary refuge last year for
more than 67,000 birds, many of them endangered.
The wetlands also serve as a tool for educating Hong Kong's urbanised
masses about the environment. Last year, along with all the birds,
the
reserve received more than 40,000 human visitors, a quarter of them
schoolchildren.
Part of the lesson is in sustainable development: The reserve includes
some traditional shrimp farms known as gei wai where the prawns are
fed
and bred by nature's bounty shrimp larvae and the nutrients they
feed
on are regularly flushed into the farms from the sea a far cry
from
the modern, intensive techniques which have ravaged the coasts throughout
much of Asia. Traditional methods may yield smaller harvests, but the
shrimp fetch a price three to four times higher, and they don't succumb
to viruses.
''The gei wai have been important in letting people know about the
sustainable uses of wetlands," explains the amiable Young, who is
officially employed by WWF Hong Kong, which manages the reserve on
behalf of the government.
It's not an easy task. The water in Deep Bay just offshore is becoming
increasingly polluted almost certainly because of pollution from
the
Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen a couple of hundred metres away. ''We
have
to be careful when bringing in the water now; on some days you can
see
and smell the pollution," says Young. ''It's killing off the larvae
which are flushed into the farms."
Meanwhile, developers have bought up land in the buffer zones
surrounding the reserve, and even in the reserve itself. They recently
had a major victory when Henderson Land, Hong Kong's biggest developer,
won a
court case which could allow them to build on the plots, although they
apparently are seeking a compromise deal.
''The northwestern New Territories is a major growth area," says Peter
Hills, an urban planner at Hong Kong University. ''Mai Po is basically
being enclosed by urban development."
The current government is sticking to its stand of no large-scale
development in the buffer zone. But as with so much else in Hong Kong,
the future of this policy after the handover is uncertain.