🔗 Share this article

Silva Gu's vision darts across vast expanses of dense fields, searching for suspicious activity in the early morning gloom.

He speaks in less than a whisper as they attempt to locate a spot to hide in the grasslands. Behind us, the vast metropolis of Beijing has yet to wake. During the vigil, the only sound is the quiet of the morning.

And then, as the sky begins to brighten before dawn, there is the crunch of footsteps. Illegal trappers are present.

Caught

In the skies above us, a multitude of winged travelers, many so small that they could rest in the palm of your hand, are traveling to the south for winter.

They have taken advantage of the extended daylight in Siberia, or Mongolia, consuming insects and fruit. As the year comes to a close and icy winds bring the first frosts of winter, they journey to warmer places to breed and eat.

There are 1500-plus bird species, accounting for thirteen percent of the world's total – more than 800 of those are birds that migrate. Several of the major paths they follow intersect in China.

The patch of grassland being monitored, on the fringes of the Chinese capital, is an haven for small birds – any further and the urban landscape offer few options to rest among clusters of concrete.

It is equally attractive for the poachers and their "mist nets", so fine you can barely see them.

The trap we stumbled upon was extending over a large section of the field and held up with wooden sticks. In the middle, a tiny bird was struggling frantically to escape, but the more it moved, the more its claws became tangled.

This was a protected songbird, a protected bird in China, and an important "indicator species" – meaning if its numbers are thriving, so is its environment.

Tracking the Trappers

The conservationist, in his thirties, does this work for free using his own savings. He has given up on many sleeping hours to rescue birds, and he has spent the last decade urging the police in Beijing to take this crime seriously.

"In the early days, no-one cared," he says.

So he enlisted helpers who did care and launched a group called the Bird Protection Unit. He held community gatherings and invited the heads of the local police and forestry bureau. These consistent and determined acts of advocacy appear to have worked. The police realized that apprehending illegal hunters also helped in uncovering other kinds of criminal activity.

"It became clear our objectives became partially aligned," Silva says, noting that implementation remains inconsistent.

His passion for avian life started in childhood. He grew up in the nineties in a very different Beijing.

He recalls roaming through the grasslands on the city's edges where he found birds, frogs and snakes. "But starting from the 2000s, everything changed."

Rapid economic growth brought a huge influx of rural workers to cities. This expansion meant grasslands were viewed as empty places to build, not sanctuaries to conserve.

This shift shocked him. The grasslands receded, as did the wildlife they housed.

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

This has not made for an simple journey. A major Beijing's biggest bird dealers found out he was under scrutiny by Silva and retaliated.

"He gathered several of his accomplices who surrounded me and beat me up," Silva recalls. He says he went to the police but the perpetrators were not brought to justice.

He has also lost his team of helpers over the years. This work requires covert operations and lost sleep. Silva says not many are prepared for the difficult – and sometimes dangerous job.

"This is my full-time commitment," he says. "I made it a project because if you want to tackle this challenge, you must commit completely. You cannot be half-hearted."

He says fundraising covers some of the costs – over 100,000 yuan a year – but funding has declined because of the slowing economy.

So he has found new ways to track the poachers.

He studies satellite imagery to find the routes created by the poachers. He maps those against the birds' flight paths and looks for areas where they may rest. The satellite images can even show netting setups which can catch hundreds of small birds during darkness.

"Siberian rubythroats and bluethroats sell for a premium," Silva says. "In big cities like Beijing and Tianjin, those who want to keep birds are now quite wealthy."

Although there are environmental regulations in place, Silva believes the fines to punish the crime do not outweigh the financial benefits of trapping and trading songbirds.

Keeping a caged bird was – and for some people in China, still is – a status symbol. This dates back to the Qing dynasty. Wealthy individuals would build ornate bamboo cages to display their birds.

It's a tradition that persists mainly among retired men in their 60s or 70s. Silva says older Chinese people don't realise they are committing a wildlife crime, or understand that numerous birds had to die in a trap for them to purchase a caged bird.

"This generation often lacked enough to eat growing up. Now with some disposable income, they have inherited the practice of keeping birds in cages," he says. "China developed so fast, there was no time to educate people about ecology. Once adults' values are set, they're extremely difficult to change."

Disrupted

On a long low wall in Beijing, a vendor has several tiny enclosures with tiny twittering birds.

A separate individual is positioned near a nearby market holding a bird cage shrouded in a dark cloth. He tells passers-by discreetly that his songbird is rare, worth about 1900 yuan.

This offers a view of an old Beijing where small unofficial traders have created their own market.

The area alongside the water stretches for several miles and on a sunny weekday morning, there were people looking at everything from old trinkets to false teeth.

Information suggested that wild songbirds could be purchased in a small park. The location was not concealed.

Music was blasting 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 covered in black fabric.

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