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Nature Toki: the re-emergence of an extinct bird

thomas

Unswerving cyclist
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14 Mar 2002
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Let's start with some good news today: after twenty years of close extinction, the Japanese toki (crested ibis Nipponia nippon), has gone from virtually zero to about 500 now living in Japan (all in Sado). While the last wild specimen died in 2003, Japan launched an artificial breeding programme in 1999 in collaboration with China: half of the chicks born in Japan stay there, while the other half is returned to China. If only politics worked only half as well as science!

nipponia-nippon.jpg

Photo credit: WikiMedia

Convincing the farmers of Sado to use environmentally friendly fertilisers assured the survival of the toki.

"Back then people didn't think about the environment when farming. Their priorities were selling products at a high price and harvesting as much as possible," said Shinichiro Saito, a 60-year-old rice farmer. Farmers were asked to cut chemical fertilisers and pesticides by half from the level allowed by local rules, but there was pushback. Fewer chemicals meant smaller harvests, lost income, and more weeding. And some farmers couldn't see the point of other proposals like underground channels connecting rice fields to rivers to increase the flow of aquatic life. Local officials used a carrot-and-stick approach, refusing to buy rice from farmers who rejected the new chemical limits and creating a new premium brand of "toki-friendly" rice for those who did.


toki-crested-ibis.jpg

Photo credit: AFP



AFP YT video here.
 
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