🔗 Share this article

Silva Gu's eyes scan across miles of dense fields, looking for any movement in the pre-dawn darkness.

He speaks in a muted voice as they attempt to locate a place of cover in the grasslands. In the distance, the huge urban center of Beijing slumbers on. As we wait, the only sound is our own breath.

Suddenly, as the sky starts to lighten with the approaching day, there is the crunch of footsteps. The poachers are here.

Snared

In the skies above us, billions of birds, some tiny enough that they could rest in the palm of your hand, are journeying southward for winter.

They have benefited from the extended daylight in northern regions, consuming bugs and berries. As the year comes to a close and chilling gusts bring the early cold of winter, they head to more temperate climates to breed and eat.

China is home to more than 1,500 bird species, representing roughly 13% of the planet's species – over eight hundred of those are migratory birds. Four of the nine major flyways they follow cross through China.

This particular field being monitored, on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, is an oasis for small birds – any further and the city skies offer little opportunity to rest among forests of concrete.

It is also an oasis for the poachers and their "fine nets", so fine you can almost miss them.

A net we almost encountered was strung across a large section of the field and held up with wooden sticks. At its center, a tiny bird was struggling frantically to untangle itself, but the more it struggled, the more its claws became tangled.

It was a protected songbird, a protected bird in China, and an important "bio-indicator" – meaning if its numbers are thriving, so is its habitat.

Pursuing the Poachers

Silva, who is in his 30s, performs this duty for free using his own savings. He has sacrificed many sleeping hours to set songbirds free, and he has spent the last decade convincing the police in Beijing to prioritize this issue.

"Back in 2015, no-one cared," he remarks.

So he recruited volunteers who did care and established a group called the Beijing Migratory Bird Squad. He held public meetings and brought in the officials of the local police and forestry bureau. These consistent and determined acts of advocacy appear to have worked. The police found that apprehending illegal hunters also helped in tracking down other kinds of criminal activity.

"We found our objectives became somewhat shared," Silva says, noting that the response is not uniform.

His passion for avian life began during childhood. He was raised in the nineties in a very different Beijing.

He remembers wandering in the fields on the city's edges where he found birds, frogs and snakes. "However, beginning in the 2000s, everything changed."

China's booming economy brought millions of rural workers to cities. This expansion meant grasslands were viewed as land for construction, not protected zones to conserve.

The change stunned Silva. The grasslands receded, as did the ecosystems they sustained.

"I made the choice back then to work in conservation and I took this path," he says.

It has not been an easy life. A major Beijing's biggest bird dealers discovered he was being investigated by Silva and retaliated.

"He gathered several of his accomplices who confronted me and assaulted me," Silva remembers. He says he reported to the police but the perpetrators were not held accountable.

He has also seen the departure of his army of volunteers over the years. This work requires patience and night vigils. Silva says few people are willing to take on the difficult – and sometimes dangerous job.

"I do this full-time," he says. "I treat it as a mission because if you want to address this major issue, you must devote yourself wholeheartedly. You can't do it part-time."

He says fundraising covers some of the costs – more than 100,000 yuan annually – but support has waned because of the slowing economy.

So he has found new ways to hunt the hunters.

He analyzes aerial photos to find the trails created by the poachers. He charts these against the birds' flight paths and looks for areas where they may stop for the night. The satellite images can even show netting setups which can capture scores of small birds during darkness.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats sell for a premium," Silva says. "In urban centers like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to keep birds are now often affluent."

While there are wildlife laws in place, Silva argues the penalties to punish the crime do not outweigh the potential profits of trapping and trading songbirds.

Keeping a caged bird was – and for some people in China, still is – a mark of prestige. This originates from the imperial era. Wealthy individuals would build ornate bamboo cages to display their birds.

This custom that persists mainly among older individuals in their 60s or 70s. Silva says older Chinese people don't realise they are committing a wildlife crime, or grasp that numerous birds were killed in a trap for them to purchase a pet.

"This generation often lacked enough to eat growing up. Now with some disposable income, they have inherited the habit and custom of keeping birds in cages," he says. "China developed so fast, there was no time to educate people about ecology. Once people's attitudes are set, they're really hard to change."

Busted

Along a riverside path in Beijing, a trader has several tiny enclosures with chirping songbirds.

A separate individual is positioned near a nearby market holding a bird cage shrouded in a black veil. He informs passers-by quietly that his songbird is rare, worth nearly 1900 yuan.

This is a glimpse of an old Beijing where small unofficial traders have established a niche trade.

The path by the river stretches for several miles and on a sunny weekday morning, there were shoppers browsing everything from old trinkets to false teeth.

Information suggested that wild songbirds could be purchased in a nearby green space. The location was not concealed.

Loud music played from a speaker under the low trees where a group of elderly ladies were performing a fan dance. Nearby several men, all in their later years, had congregated with bird cages – some had two or three in their hands. Most were concealed by dark cloth.

But today there would be no transactions because the police had arrived. They were interviewing the bird owners and recording details. Defiant, one man said he was {taking his caged bird for a walk|simply exercising his