Some birds, whose meat is unfortunately regarded by Chinese people as having medicinal effects, have suffered from intense hunting in the past half century. The yellow-crested bunting, seen by some as the "ginseng of the sky," has gradually become an endangered species due to huge demand for their meat.
As Liu Yidan, a famous volunteer devoted to protecting wild birds, told Southern Weekend, the huge profits available is the biggest reason bird hunters set out to catch so many birds.
A volunteer from Hebei once revealed to media that while the farmers make only 1,000 yuan ($153) by planting rice every year, hunting birds in their rice fields for a season could earn them 20,000 yuan.
Bird-hunting is just the first link on the black profit chain of the migrating bird trade. It is a business that requires almost no capital to enter. A few dozen yuan can buy one electronic bird callers, nets and bamboo poles that can last them a whole season. At the end of the chain, a yellow-breasted bunting can be sold for six yuan each while some large wild birds can be sold for thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan.
The market for such birds is huge, whether as food or as caged pets. In many illegal markets for birds in Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan, there are dealers publicly peddling migrating birds. Many fearless bird dealers even wait at the park gates and outside temples for customers, because Buddhists who like to free captive animals are their ideal customers.
A volunteer named Wang Jianmin told Procuratorial Daily that in several big bird markets in Tianjin, nearly 10,000 wild birds are traded every day. The birds on the market are mainly migrating birds that have recently passed through the city and some species are under special State protection.
Difficulties in protection
As the public grows more aware of animal protection in recent years, harming and selling wild birds is becoming less tolerated.
The law is also catching up in this respect. It has long stipulated in criminal law that those who illegally hunt, kill or sell endangered wild animals will be punished. China's Wild Animal Conservation Law that was revised this July prohibits hunting wild animals and the sale of certain hunting devices.
But problems remain in terms of enforcement. In addition, law enforcement departments with authority over wild animals are still passive in protection, and acting only after they receive reports from the public.
Buying and freeing animals already in captivity, which used to be the main way the public would help wild animals, has largely been abandoned as a technique as it simply spurs demand for the birds and therefore greater hunting.
Qi Yuting, a volunteer with Let Birds Fly who took part in the anti-net operation in Tianjin this month, told the Global Times that they are still facing many difficulties in rescuing birds.
"Our volunteers need to get up as early as 4 am and drive to rural areas for patrols, they have to listen for and identify those electronic callers, or look for suspicious people carrying long sticks walking nearby," Qi said.
With only simply detective devices like telescopes, it often takes them about one or two hours to find these traps. But demolishing nets means nothing to the hunters. They can set up new nets again very quickly later.
As soon as they find the nets, Qi said they call the police. Though the situation is getting better compared to several years ago, she still complains that many village police officers are not familiar with bird protection.
"Sometimes it takes quite a long time for the police to arrive, and they barely have any awareness of bird protection," said Qi. "The police once took our volunteers and the bird hunters to the police station together, but did not punish those hunters at all, even giving them back their hunting tools," she added.
It is also a dangerous job. The volunteers sometimes face violence from bird hunters. In spring 2015, while Liu Yidan was rescuing trapped birds on a net, she was attacked by three bird hunters.
Apart from rescuing birds, Qi's organization is also involved in promoting legislation to protect birds and offering help to other bird-loving groups all over China.
All in all, NGOs alone cannot solve this problem and there needs to be greater official effort to crack down on this illegal hunting.
Various government departments and NGOs should work together on transport, sales, and so on, so as to totally eliminate the profit chain that threatens the safety of wild birds, as noted by Lu Jun, director of the National Bird Tagging Center.
