Under the Smokestacks’ Shadows

Sulfur wafts in the sea breeze.

Coasting down a slight decline, with my scooter engine off, I freewheel quietly on a path between low marsh and tall grass in the relatively unknown Linshui Wetland. The wind twirls the grass blades side to side, bending them over. The blades flex but straighten as the gust moves on, parting more wetland grass.

 

Straight ahead, to the west and less than 900 metres away, four multicoloured smokestacks tower overhead like giant crayons. Circling each column, dozens of playfully painted shorebirds add to the irony. A few hundred metres south of the stacks, pollution cakes evergreen needles into clumps resembling breaded chicken. 

 

The four towers are anchored to a behemoth of a power station that is anything but playful. Beneath the Taichung Power Plant in Longjing, adjacent to the Strait of Taiwan, is the planet's largest emitter of carbon dioxide from any coal-fired power station. It produces roughly 40 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Not without its many Taiwanese detractors, much of the island's population still depends on its electricity, as it supplies central Taiwan and Taipei with energy.  

 

Longjing's four power plant smokestacks

                                

Remarkably, next to this power station, Linshui Wetland exists almost by accident. Strangely, this secretive place expresses both despair and optimism.

 

The power station is a heartbreaker, and ten minutes into my visit, a dull, pollution headache begins. The wind is blowing steadily inland. The wetland is nothing fancy; it is neglected and shabby but miraculously filled with birds. It offers proof of nature’s ability to adapt. These polar extremes give me a sliver of hope and fill me with triumph for the birds.

                                                                          

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Linshui Wetland is a patchwork of government property, private farmland, fish ponds and fallow fields of roughly 200 hundred acres. It is invisible on the internet and only familiar with local birders.

 

A gravel pit sits next to a fish rearing pond, which in turn, sits next to a square pond surrounded by hordes of roosting egrets and herons in trees. The modest wetland is crisscrossed with tidal and freshwater canals, many small enough to step over. Meanwhile, barefoot farmers on smokers’ cough motorcycles putter through the marsh tending their fields while fishers hunch over private fish ponds waiting.

 

Initially, the wetland was created not for wildlife but as a series of wastewater treatment ponds decades ago for an adjacent industrial park. There was anticipation that future industrial expansion would add to the importance and growth of the waste ponds, but that never materialized. Once the initial wastewater was pumped into the ponds from the industrial park, the effluent settled, turned black, and stunk terribly.

 

Longjing’s residents complained over the stench, and now the wastewater is diverted through a smaller water treatment plant, and the ponds are left vacant. The wetland has received some attention. Wood fences shield a few sections of the wetland, but several planks are missing. A few discard pieces of furniture rot in the weeds. Still, the marsh supports birds.

 

An active estuary system surrounds the north and west boundaries of the wetland. Linshui's rivers empty into the larger Dadu River to the south. At this point, Dadu River is an estuary itself and part of the larger and better known Dadu Estuary Important Wetland with a total area of over 9,400 acres.   

 

Back in Linshui's estuary rivers, hundreds of colourful crabs scurry out of their burrows during low tide. Introduced Sacred Ibis with curved black bills and black heads probe the mud for arthropods. Silky white egrets poke between the exposed mangrove roots for snacks.

 

In the wetland, sandpipers and plovers, along with ducks and Little Grebes, tilt vertically, searching the bottom for food. A large, wading flock of Black-winged stilts with long pink legs stride through the ponds, oblivious to the nearby stacks.

 

Black-winged stilt feeding in the wetland

                               

            

Above the fields, a Black-shouldered kite hovers, with a perfectly motionless head focused on prey with piercing red eyes. The fields and brush have dozens of smaller species. Dadu Estuary Important Wetland, less than a kilometre away, has recorded over 200 bird species, so we can assume many visit the Linshui wetland too.

 

My visits here have given me great birds, but my biggest takeaway is how birds endure human intrusion, destruction and survive. It's a true feathered triumph in the Linshui wetland.