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By Linda Schmidt Looking out over Chiku Lagoon on the west coast of Taiwan, the shimmering blue waters meld with the wide expanse of sky above. The boundary is marked only by a slim stroke of white, barely visible at the far edge of the shallow wetland. A discerning viewer might recognize that line as a flock of black-faced spoonbills, one of the world’s most endangered birds; a telephoto lens would reveal dozens of snow-white heron-like birds wading in the water, awkward but elegant as they sweep their long, flared, black beaks through the shallows in search of small fish.
Led at Berkeley by Randy Hester, a professor and former chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and in Taiwan by John Liu, Ph.D. ’80, a professor at National Taiwan University, the volunteers have found that the problem of saving the spoonbill has no simple solution. The all-too-human issues of money, politics, and national boundaries all create complex obstacles in helping the birds find a way to live in the modern world. Hester and Liu became friends when Liu was a doctoral student at Cal. Later, in Liu’s classes at NTU, Hester delivered lectures on involving local residents in the architectural and environmental decisions that affect their neighborhoods. During one of these trips, Liu invited Hester to join him in meeting with a group of Taiwanese fishermen who were concerned about the Binan industrial complex, which was to be built on the wetland areas where, for generations, they had harvested the region’s rich fishery and oyster beds, and where most of the world’s remaining spoonbills spend the winter months. Despite a favorable environmental impact statement on the development prepared by government-funded scientists, the fishermen feared that the chemical plant and pollution would destroy their traditional livelihoods. “I asked them to tell me their concerns,” Hester recalls of his first meeting with the fishermen. “Most of them gave poetic descriptions of that place, and of their relations with the water and the fish and the birds. They said, ‘This is the most beautiful place in the world.’” Liu and Hester set their students onto the problem. Barbara Butler, MLA ’00, joined the project in the fall of 1997. “You can’t hear about the birds and talk to the people who care and then do nothing,” she says.
For others, the bird itself is justification enough. “I was walking past a classroom in Wurster Hall and saw a video of the spoonbills,” says Sheila Dickie, alumni relations director for the College of Environmental Design, who had stumbled across one of Hester’s presentations to an undergraduate class. “The video showed the birds in their natural habitat in Taiwan, playing with grass, which they do a lot--they play tug-of-war to strengthen their wonderful bills. I stood and watched and fell in love with the birds.” In the six years since, Dickie has been one of SAVE’s leading volunteers. When Hester and his students evaluated the environmental impact statement for the Binan industrial complex, they discovered that the needs of the spoonbill had been seriously misunderstood. “The statement said the birds only used this tiny, tiny space at the south end of the lagoon, and that the complex, which was slated to occupy the northern third of the lagoon, would have no impact,” he says. “But the fishermen told us they had seen the birds throughout the area. It turns out they roost during the day and forage widely at night.” The spoonbills’ feeding pattern was just one of many mysteries. Even their breeding behaviors are largely unknown. The birds’ primary breeding colonies are located on a few small, rocky islands off the coast of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, inaccessible to biologists. “The truth is, there was a lot of stuff that nobody knew,” says Hester. “I just started contacting people on campus and asking, ‘Do you know anything about spoonbills?’” Eventually, SAVE recruited many Berkeley faculty members, including hydrogeologist Matt Kondolph, who analyzed the water needs of the proposed plant. The group also engaged outside experts, such as biologist Malcolm Coulter, a specialist in storks, ibises, and spoonbills. “I’m not a scientist,” Hester says. “We take all the best information there is available and turn it into a land-use plan.” Much of Hester’s research uses a similar approach; he has examined the territorial behavior of a teenage gang in a Boston park to minimize conflict with other park users, and mapped the ranges of mountain lions in southern California in order to plan an ecologically viable greenbelt. “Malcolm Coulter said spoonbills will fly up to 30 kilometers to feed. There was no question that the industrial plant would destroy some of their habitat,” says Hester. In April 1998, a large delegation of SAVE members, made up of Berkeley students, faculty, and alumni as well as other scientists and environmental planners, traveled to Taiwan to present their initial findings to twenty different government and community groups. Arguing that the Binan complex would limit other development possibilities in Taiwan and also would adversely affect water resources on the island, they recommended abandoning plans for industrial development and cultivating the area around Chiku Lagoon as a haven for the birds and a hub of ecotourism. Officials in the Taiwanese government listened and stated at the time that approval of Binan was increasingly unlikely, although the plan has never officially been shelved. “All these saltlands are owned by the government, and they see them becoming big economic developments,” says Hester. “When the petrochemical plant sort of died, almost immediately they proposed an international airport.” Members of SAVE quickly began to research the effects of noise and air pollution, as well as the economic impact, that an airport would produce. “A lot of people in Taiwan at the time when the Binan industrial complex was first proposed, and with the airport as well, asked, ‘How important is a species when we need jobs?’” says Butler, who has traveled to Taiwan three times in the continuing effort to develop an alternate economic plan centered on ecotourism and “green” industry. “The younger generation wasn’t really interested in pursuing aquaculture and farming, and they were leaving. It was very important to this community to provide jobs for the younger people. But our economic analysis found that these projects would only produce short-term jobs. If the corporate owners decide to close or move the plant, that’s it--the environment is destroyed and the jobs are gone. Tourism could create more jobs in visitor-service industries, and would provide a more diverse economy. Our plan also promotes regional agricultural products, and supports processing more of the fish in the area. In that diversified economy, if one aspect fails, the others can keep moving forward.”
SAVE has used the strength of public opinion as effectively as scientific studies in championing the spoonbill. On a follow-up trip in 1999, SAVE members from Berkeley and Taiwan staged a public demonstration at the Taipei railway station to further publicize the bird’s endangered status. Dressed as spoonbills, the group was joined by enthusiastic passers-by as they performed a symbolic Chinese-style dance. “The Taiwanese are just great at street theater and street demonstration,” says Hester. The protest garnered positive media attention, and the bird has become something of a cause célèbre--the black-faced spoonbill was named the “millennium bird” of Taiwan, and its image now graces the Taiwanese passport and bus passes. Meanwhile, the villagers living near Chiku Lagoon have come to see the benefits of ecotourism, and the role of the spoonbill in preserving their way of life. “In the time that we’ve been working on the project, a new pride has emerged,” says Butler. “People are more interested in their heritage and the history of their region. Younger people who grew up in the area are coming back and want to work on this project.” Success, however, brings its own difficulties. “The students we worked with at National Taiwan University were scared of ecotourism,” says Butler. “They’d seen such things happen in other parts of Taiwan, where people ‘discovered’ something very beautiful--and loved it to death.” Since Chiku Lagoon was designated as a national scenic area, its spoonbills have become a popular sight-seeing destination, drawing as many as 100,000 visitors in a single weekend. “They come in on massive tour busses, and this community has tiny little roads. How do you accommodate this?” she asks. Unlike the United States, Taiwan does not have a long history of conservation to guide its efforts in saving the spoonbill. “Although people understand that this is something to value and protect, there’s a tendency to exploit it, even through ecotourism,” says Butler, who received a post-graduate fellowship to study ecotourism planning and design for the area. Members of SAVE are sensitive to the implications of imposing American environmental ideals on a foreign culture. “Taiwan is a different country with different standards, qualities, and values. You can’t just rush in and tell people how to do things,” says Dickie. “We’re in an awkward place,” agrees Hester. “Are we just the next generation of cultural imperialists?” SAVE continues to work cooperatively with the fishermen who initially opposed the Binan plant and other local groups to manage the overwhelming human traffic and to improve the spoonbill’s environment. “Clearly, people see ecotourism as a viable alternative, but there’s very little attention to preserving more habitat,” says Hester, who explains that the availability of large, safe wetland areas is critical to support any increase in the spoonbill population. But, as Taiwan grapples with its uneasy political situation, the central government exercises less authority in land-use decisions. “This is where the local groups become really important. The people in these villages really have to want this to happen,” he says. At the same time, it takes more than a village to save a bird. The black-faced spoonbill migrates between areas in North and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. “After we stopped Binan, we started looking at the entire flyway of the spoonbill,” says Butler. “You begin to understand that Taiwan could do everything in its power to make protecting the spoonbill a national priority, but if Korea and China and Japan are all developing their wetlands--and they are--there’s nothing you can do. International cooperation is really necessary for biodiversity. You can’t just protect the local habitat.” For now, there is no happy ending to the story of the black-faced spoonbill, the Taiwanese fishermen, and their traditional way of life. “I don’t think the end is in sight. These battles are going to go on forever,” says Hester. “It’s not just about the fishermen’s jobs. The spoonbill is symbolic of so many species--including perhaps ourselves. It’s about deciding the future and who gets what territory. It’s about living appropriately in a place.” |
 April 2004
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