Since July, the employees of the Chen Lake nature reserve, 90 kilometers southwest of Wuhan (Hubei) no longer really need binoculars to observe the thousands of migratory birds which, each autumn, come from Russia and take a break on the way to Australia. Thanks to dozens of cameras and microphones installed in this protected wetland, the geeks on their team allow them to control everything remotely.
On the second floor of the small building that houses their offices, the park agents have a huge bay window with a breathtaking view of the 11,579 hectares of protected wetlands that stretch out below them. But it is now on control screens that they study what is happening in this delta formed by the confluence of the Yangtze River and the Han River. A landscape of marshes, ponds and meadows that stretches as far as the eye can see and where 561 species of animals have been recorded, including 227 species of birds and 56 of fish.
Champion of « smart cities »smart cities, China is embarking on the « smart nature ». Nothing escapes these 2.0 ornithologists. The level and quality of water, soil, air, temperature but also the number of birds by species and the position of each. Just zoom in on one of them to see its characteristics. And plug in the microphone to have the feeling that the spoonbill, the cormorant or the Anadyr sandpiper are at your side.
Better, as the cameras also observe the tourists, the ornithologists can tell them in real time where they are authorized to move, according to the shyness of the present species. “The priority is the bird. Not the tourist, explains Wen Zhuo, one of the managers of the reserve. “On this scale, I think there is no more advanced system in the world”, says Jim Harkness, an American specializing in biodiversity conservation programs at the National Geographic Society.
This software is only the last step in the gradual transformation of this vast marsh which has long only interested fishermen into a “wetland of international importance”flagship of the “ecological civilization” advocated by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Since 2019, the number of migratory birds has increased there each fall from 30,000 to 85,000, with the presence of rare species such as the Dalmatian pelican or the barnacle goose.
ecological “sponge city”
While those in charge of the reserve show the site to participants of the 14e conference of the parties to the Ramsar convention on the protection of wetlands, which takes place from November 5 to 13 in Wuhan – and, by video, in Geneva – other speakers survey the banks of the Yangtze in Wuhan, this megalopolis of 11 million inhabitants as vast as Corsica.
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