Who'd be a bird at Fukuoka?

Forest and Bird, Issue 281, 1 August 1996, Page 10

Who'd be a bird at Fukuoka?

Jacqui Barrington

IN JULY 1994, despite widespread opposition at home and abroad, Auckland’s Japanese sister city of Fukuoka began construction of a 400-hectare artificial island in adjoining Hakata Bay. The massive reclamation is now having a measurable impact on the bay’s rich intertidal Wajiro mudflat, with the numbers of migratory waders using this internationally important "crossroads" site on the East Asia/ Australasia flyway having declined significantly. Pre-1993 waterbird populations were estimated at 55,000 to 60,000. After dredging began in 1994, water quality nose-dived and the latest figure for the 330 bird species known to use the area is around only 38,000. The official explanation was "natural factors". At the most recent international Ramsar wetland meeting, in Brisbane during March, the New Zealand delegation criticised Fukuoka’s treatment of such an important waterbird site. Ironically, a month later, a godwit or kuaka banded in New Zealand was identified at Wajiro, confirming the living link this bird and 14 other species form between Auckland and its sister city.

Contrary to earlier promises that all remaining tidal flats would be preserved intact, Fukuoka City has now unveiled plans to construct a highway along the four kilometres of seawall, cutting through the important remaining patches of tidal flat, including the so-called Eco-Park Zone. The preservation of the zone was one of the promises made to pacify opposition to the original reclamation by Fukuoka’s Mayor Kuwahara who stated repeatedly that no further reclamations would occur. Local environmentalists are stunned by the scale and insensitivity of these proposed developments, and the deliberate misleading of the public at home and abroad. The only hope, they say, is more international pressure to shame Fukuoka into some semblance of environmental responsibility. The heat will definitely be on when Mayor Kuwahara and 250 citizens of Fukuoka visit Auckland in October to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the sister city relationship.