Yellow-breasted Bunting – Wild Beijing 北京自然

Critically Endangered YELLOW-BREASTED BUNTINGS for sale online in China

It’s been a bad week for Yellow-breasted Bunting.

First, this beautiful songbird, once super-abundant across its range from northern Europe in the west to Japan in the east, has been classified as “Critically Endangered” on the 2017 IUCN Red List. This is the most endangered category and means that Yellow-breasted Bunting is just one step away from extinction.

And second, thanks to eagle-eyed Beijing birders, we’ve learned that, for around CNY 100-220 (GBP 12 to 25) per bird, it’s possible to buy live Yellow-breasted Buntings on Taobao, China’s version of eBay/Amazon (this link is still live at the time of publication).

The first piece of news is desperately sad, if not unexpected. The plight of the Yellow-breasted Bunting has been well-documented (for example, here and here) in conservation circles. In short, over the last two to three decades, the population has suffered a catastrophic decline of up to 95 per cent, with the main cause thought to be illegal trapping for food in China. Parallels have been drawn with the extinction of the once abundant Passenger Pigeon in North America, the last of which died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914 after the wild population was driven to extinction by a combination of hunting and habitat loss.

Conservationists in Asia, led by Hong Kong Birdwatching Society and supported by BirdLife International, are doing their best to help this ailing species through a combination of scientific studies and awareness campaigns, including distribution of the poster below and the production of ‘Yellow-breasted Bunting-friendly’ rice in Hong Kong’s Long Valley, a wintering site for the species.

The poster distributed by Hong Kong Birdwatching Society in south China – the main source of demand for Yellow-breasted Bunting as food.

It’s the second piece of news that is shocking and disgusting.

Yellow-breasted Bunting is not easily bred in captivity and the birds for sale are almost certainly of wild origin. In China it is illegal to trap any wild bird without a license, only issued for scientific purposes. It is extremely unlikely the sellers have trapped these birds legally and, in the unlikely event they have a licence, the sellers are clearly abusing the terms under which that license was issued.

Taobao, often described as China’s Ebay or Amazon, is part of the Alibaba Group founded by Ma Yun (known as Jack Ma). He is one of China’s richest men, in fact one of the wealthiest people in Asia. According to Bloomberg, he has a net worth of USD 44.9 billion as of December 2017.

What makes the sale of almost extinct wildlife on his platform all the more galling is that Jack Ma has made many public statements and commitments about not selling wildlife products. In 2014, after bowing to public pressure, Alibaba made a commitment to “abide by national laws and regulations to remove all illegal wildlife information from our platform“. And The China Daily reported that Alibaba, together with other online sales platforms “..vowed to enable no advertising or trade in illegal wildlife and its products on their platforms and said they would voluntarily accept supervision from the society and government.”

I am of the belief that, when discovering issues such as this, it is better to engage privately at first, highlighting the problem and allowing the company, which may not be aware of the illegal nature of the sales, to have a chance to fix it before going public. Of course it must be extremely difficult to monitor everything for sale on a large online platform such as Taobao. To do so needs capacity and specialist knowledge; these things take time to develop and, given the rapid growth of the business, it’s not surprising that oversight capacity has been slow to keep up.

However, it is now several years since Alibaba first courted controversy for selling illegal wildlife products and sadly it appears that “voluntarily accepting supervision from society and government”, as committed by Alibaba in 2014, are hollow words.

Back in December 2015 Birding Beijing alerted Alibaba to several sellers offering migrant birds for sale including Mongolian and Black Larks. After an acknowledgement of our correspondence, we subsequently received a reply to say that, as we could not prove these birds were captured in the wild, it was not illegal to sell them. So, according to Alibaba, there was no onus on them to ensure the products sold on their platform are legal. A disappointing response.

On hearing about sellers offering Yellow-breasted Buntings for sale, we once again contacted Alibaba to inform them of this illegal activity on their site. This time we received no reply at all after 10 days.

It is therefore with reluctance that I am writing this article to publicise the fact that Alibaba is selling almost extinct wildlife on its platform and doesn’t appear to care.

What is even more shocking about this latest episode is that it flies in the face of President Xi Jinping’s vision of a “Beautiful China”. The speech President Xi delivered to the 19th Communist Party Congress in October 2017 is widely seen as the guiding light for government and society in China and is quoted in almost all meetings with government officials. Some relevant extracts from the speech are below:

“We must pursue a model of sustainable development featuring increased
production, higher living standards, and healthy ecosystems. We must continue
the Beautiful China initiative to create good working and living environments for
our people and play our part in ensuring global ecological security.”

“We will establish an environmental governance system in which government takes the lead, enterprises assume main responsibility, and social organizations and the public also participate.”

“We will take tough steps to stop and punish all activities that damage the environment.”

Alibaba’s facilitation of the illegal wildlife trade is clearly inconsistent with all three of these statements.

The amount of money Taobao makes from selling items such as this must be tiny in the context of their overall business. Wouldn’t it make sense, for the sake of their reputation, to ban the sales of any wildlife, whether it’s clearly illegal or if there is any doubt? The cost would be negligible and the benefits to their image considerable.

Only then will they be able to claim that they care about wildlife and only then will their business be consistent with Xi Jinping’s vision for a modern “Beautiful China”. If Alibaba’s leader is going to make big commitments, it is wise to ensure he or she can live up to them. I hope someone from Alibaba can comment.

The Yellow-breasted Bunting is one of the most beautiful songbirds in China; it’s a feature of spring and autumn in Beijing and as recently as September, I was fortunate to see one on the patch of scrub close to my apartment in Shunyi. It’s decline towards extinction may yet be irreversible. However, with the efforts of conservationists in China and other parts of east Asia, supported by people from all over the world, it has a chance. It would be tragic if these efforts are undermined by the selfish and irresponsible attitude of Alibaba.

UPDATE: on the morning of 8 December we received a call from a representative of Alibaba. The representative said Taobao was ‘horrified’ to see the social media posts about Yellow-breasted Buntings for sale and, in response to the article, removed the seller’s page and other similar posts. The representative also said the company was reviewing its procedures to try to improve their success rate at spotting sellers offering wild birds. They would be happy to receive links of any posts of concern and would deal with them appropriately. Additionally, they committed to passing on the details of sellers of wild birds to the police. Comment: This is a positive response but, of course, the proof is in the pudding. We have a long list of links showing wild birds for sale and we’ll be regularly monitoring Taobao to ensure there is an improvement.

Title image: screenshot of the page on Taobao selling Yellow-breasted Buntings (taken 7 December 2017).

Yellow-breasted Bunting bucks the trend in Beijing!

If you care about birds and conservation, you will be used to bad news. As a wise man once said, “environmental victories are temporary and the losses are permanent“. We are losing our biodiversity at a lightning speed with some estimates putting the extinction rate at around 10,000 times the natural rate. And it was in June this year that a scientific paper was published about the dramatic decline of up to 95% in the once super-abundant Yellow-breasted Bunting.

This quote is from the BirdLife article published at the time:

“The magnitude and speed of the decline is unprecedented among birds distributed over such a large area, with the exception of the Passenger Pigeon, which went extinct in 1914 due to industrial-scale hunting”, said Dr Johannes Kamp from the University of Münster, the lead author of the paper.

Although there is a lack of hard data about the population of Yellow-breasted Bunting, there is much anecdotal evidence of its decline, as outlined in the paper, and there can be no doubt that the contraction in its range and the reduction in numbers recorded at communal wintering sites are very real.

And it was in September 2013 that we found a bird trapper at Nanpu, on the Hebei coast, using a caged Yellow-breasted Bunting as a lure alongside some mist-nets.

The trapper was surprisingly cooperative as we dismantled the nets and freed the trapped birds.

A distressed-looking male Yellow-breasted Bunting, now officially an endangered species after years of persecution.

So it has been with some surprise and delight that, this autumn, there have been record numbers of Yellow-breasted Buntings seen in Beijing. Definitely something to celebrate!

Here are a few recent counts:

44 on 26 August 2015 at Miyun Reservoir (Paul Holt and Terry Townshend). Exactly double the previous Beijing record count!

14 on 29 August 2015 at Miyun Reservoir (Jan-Erik Nilsen)

29 on 30 August 2015 at Miyun Reservoir (Paul Holt and Terry Townshend)

15 on 1 September 2015 at Miyun Reservoir (Terry Townshend and Jeff Hollobaugh)

Although data are sparse, the records we have from Birdtalker (the Chinese bird record database) show no change in the species’ status in Beijing in last 10 years. The important caveat here is that there has been much more observer coverage of good habitat this year, especially in late August (the peak period for autumn migration of this species).

Whatever the reason, we are very happy to see good numbers of this most beautiful of buntings.

Here is a photo from this autumn in Beijing and two short videos – the first of adult male singing on the breeding grounds (in Mongolia) and the second of autumn birds in Beijing.

Thanks to Paul Holt and Jan-Erik Nilsen for sharing thoughts and sightings of Yellow-breasted Bunting via the Birding Beijing WeChat group which contributed to this article.

Shorebirding at Nanpu and more illegal trapping

At the Beijing birders meet-up we arranged for a group trip to Nanpu, near Tangshan in Hebei Province. In total, 15 of us – both ex-pats and locals – spent the weekend at this world-class site and it was a superb trip – great fun with lots of birds!

2013-08-21 Birds — The backdrop may not be pretty but the birding is spectacular at Nanpu.

Perhaps the best single bird in terms of rarity was an ORIENTAL STORK that came in off the sea. And amongst the other highlights were impressive numbers of shorebirds with 4,700 SHARP-TAILED SANDPIPERS and 2,325 DUNLIN, a single RUFF (rare here), five juvenile RED-NECKED PHALAROPES, at least six first-year SAUNDERS’S and up to 80 RELICT GULLS and decent numbers of passerines moving down the coast. High counts included 54 BLACK-NAPED ORIOLES (including a single flock of 23 birds!), 100 DUSKY WARBLERS, 300 SIBERIAN STONECHATS, up to 150 RICHARD’S PIPITS, two BLYTH’S PIPITS, two PECHORA PIPITS and six YELLOW-BROWED BUNTINGS.

A typically thorough full report by Paul Holt can be downloaded here: Birding coastal Tangshan, Hebei 7 & 8 September 2013

Per shorebirding at Nanpu. — Per checking out the waders on a roadside pond at Nanpu.

This is "EVA" the Bar-tailed Godwit. Colour-flagging of migratory shorebirds helps researchers to better understand the routes these birds take and the stopover sites they use which, in turn informs conservation measures. You can read about EVA's history in the trip report. — This is “EVA” the Bar-tailed Godwit. Colour-flagging of migratory shorebirds helps researchers to better understand the routes these birds take and the stopover sites they use which, in turn informs conservation measures. You can read about EVA’s history in the trip report.

Juvenile Red-necked Stint. Beautiful birds!

It was hot at Nanpu and, fortunately, there is a small village where one can purchase ice creams! I can thoroughly recommend the ‘traditional flavour’ ice lollies.. delicious (even though I am not sure of what exactly they taste!). The locals here make their living from the mudflats, where they harvest the shellfish and shrimps. Here are a few maintaining their nets.

Local ladies maintaining the shrimp nets

And in the early mornings, our 0500 starts were made (slightly) easier by the delicious bao zi (steamed dumplings) that were on sale for the equivalent of 5p each…

Jan-Erik and Andrew browsing the local bao zi stall.

At the coast, where passerine migration was most impressive, we unfortunately encountered more illegal bird trapping activity. From the car, Paul heard a Yellow-breasted Bunting singing and we stopped to investigate. We very quickly saw a line of mist nets in the grass close by. The poacher had set up an elaborate line of nets accompanied by caged songbirds, clearly designed to lure in wild birds. The caged birds included Common Rosefinch, Yellow-breasted and Yellow-browed Buntings – three species that were clearly moving at this time of year.

A male Common Rosefinch strategically placed to lure in wild birds.

In the nets we found alive 2 Common Rosefinches plus Yellow-browed, Arctic and Dusky Warblers, which we promptly released. But it was too late for 4 Brown Shrikes which had fallen victim to this cruel practice.

The poacher soon arrived (claiming that the nets were his friend’s and not his – yeah right). We told him firmly that this was illegal and that we would be taking photos and reporting him to the Hebei Forestry Administration. He did not protest and actually helped us to dismantle and destroy the nets, snap the poles, release the caged birds and destroy the cages. On return to Beijing I posted the photos on Sina Weibo (Chinese “Twitter”) asking for help in reporting this illegal activity. Within 10 minutes, users on the microblogging service had translated my report into mandarin and submitted it to the Hebei Forestry Administration… wow! The power of social media. Thanks guys!

Ironically, the next day we were ejected from this area by local security guards from the nearby oil terminal and police who claimed that it was a “nature reserve”. So it’s ok to drill for oil and trap wild birds in a nature reserve but birding is a step too far…! A big thank you to Lei Ming and friends for following up on my behalf with the Hebei Forestry Administration.