|
BEIJING, Feb. 2-- Unlike the rest of the neighborhood, which is busy decorating their houses with couplets of rhymed wishes for the upcoming Spring Festival, at 11 p.m. Friday, Song Keming, a mild man with a strong build and pleasant features, put on his coat and began his inspection along the vast and extensive wetlands along the Yellow River. This is his plan for Chinese New Year's Eve, as it has been for every day and night for the past 20 years. Enduring temperature below the freezing point, Song tries to curb his coughs caused by chronic bronchitis as he and others patrol along the wetland. It is the winter habitat for tens of thousands of migratory birds, including Asian great bustard (Otis tarda dybowskii, "dabao" in Chinese), a critically endangered species that has been spending winters here for thousands of years. There are only about 800 specimens of the great bustard's Asian subspecies left in China, from where it gets the nickname "the giant panda of the birds." With striped plumage and known to be the heaviest flying terrestrial bird, the Asian subspecies migrates over 10,000 kilometers across Eurasia every year, which is one of the longest migration ranges of any threatened species. For 20 years, Song has been guarding Changyuan wetland reserve bordering Shandong and Henan provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. The wetlands have been an important wintering home for the bustard and many other wildlife species that form the rich biosphere of the "Mother River of China." | 
