People and wildlife to benefit from China/WWT agreement
British and Chinese wetlands could benefit from an agreement to share conservation expertise, signed today between the Chinese Government and UK charity the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT).
The agreement opens the door to share technology to design and build wetlands that can protect towns from flooding, pollution or drought. Constructed wetlands can also be a haven for wildlife, making places nicer to live and attracting ecotourism.
Both sides will also share expertise in monitoring and researching wetland wildlife, and training up local people to be researchers or guides.
WWT Chief Executive Martin Spray CBE said:
“This agreement recognises that accelerating development across the world needs to be sustainable, both environmentally and economically. It is about maximising what we can do for nature and what nature can do for us.
“The more we work together, the more we can help and learn from each other. I’m delighted that the Vice Minister has come to WWT’s headquarters at Slimbridge to sign this agreement, and look forward to visiting him in China.”
The agreement formalises the work WWT is already contributing alongside other NGO partners in China. WWT’s expert aviculturists are currently in northeast Russia using a technique called 'headstarting' to help increase the numbers of wild critically endangered spoon-billed sandpipers that will migrate south along the Chinese coast in the autumn, and this agreement could be a step towards helping maintain critical Chinese coastal wetland stopover sites along the route.
WWT has also helped to increase monitoring capacity, and to bring communities closer to their wetland heritage, in the Yangtze River wetlands. They have developed monitoring plans and trained local people to collect data, as well as contributing to the Yangtze Waterbird Monitoring Network’s engagement with schools, offices and bird watching clubs.
Meanwhile WWT’s Consulting arm has contributed to several construction projects including Shishou Milu, Deqing and a wetland visitor centre inspired by Slimbridge in Hong Kong.
WWT’s Wetland Link International (WLI) network of wetland centres is also active in China, working with around 12 wetland centres so far, and hoping to hold a WLI China meeting in the not too distant future with key partner Wetlands International China.
The Chinese delegation was led by Mr Chen Fengxue, Vice Minister of the State Forestry Administration (SFA) and the agreement was signed by Mr Ma Guanren, the SFA's Wetlands Conservation Center Director General, on behalf of the Convention on Wetlands Management Office of the People’s Republic of China. For WWT, it was signed by Chief Executive Martin Spray CBE.
The Convention on Wetlands is globally known as the Ramsar Convention.169 national governments have signed this convention under which more than 2,000 global ‘Wetlands of International Importance’ have been listed. The Convention also has six International Organisation Partners that help promulgate its work. The most recent Partner accepted by the Convention is WWT, which became a Partner in 2015.
WWT’s founder, the late conservationist Sir Peter Scott, was the keynote speaker at the Ramsar Convention’s first meeting in 1971. Today’s agreement between China and WWT was signed in Scott’s study, where Scott’s original panda drawing that became the logo for WWF still hangs – and is of interest to Mr Chen Fengxue because he has a responsibility for maintaining China’s panda conservation work today, an ongoing programme that Peter Scott played a key part in. A visit by Scott to China in the 1970s led to WWF establishing the Wolong nature reserve for the preservation of pandas.
