Female volunteer makes selfless effort to build ideal habitat for white cranes in E China’s Jiangxi

Photo shows white cranes flying over the Nanchang Five Stars Siberian Cranes Sanctuary. (Photo/Ye Xueling)

Photo shows white cranes inside the Nanchang Five Stars Siberian Cranes Sanctuary. (Photo/Zhou Haiyan)

In 2017, Zhou Haiyan, a photography enthusiast, together with other photographers, rented a 200,000-square-meter lotus field in an attempt to use the lotus roots grown there to feed white cranes, which are under first-class state protection in China.

Before taking up this job, Zhou had been a TV hostess. In 2013, she developed a new hobby in the form of photography, and every year since then she would take time to photograph birds at Poyang Lake in Nanchang, east China’s Jiangxi Province. The beautiful white cranes gradually were able to capture her heart.

Growing lotus proved to be an arduous task for Zhou when she started. During the ploughing season, she often got up at 5 a.m. to prepare for the transplanting of lotus seedlings. Slogging through the sticky mud while wearing high-tube rubber boots, she soon found that her legs and feet would get drenched with sweat.

Zhou and her colleagues spent more than 1 million yuan ($148,600) to build the lotus field, which is located near Poyang Lake. They waited several months before the white cranes finally began arriving at the field in November 2017. In the winter during the same year, more than 1,400 white cranes gathered around the lotus field.

For nearly 10 months throughout the year, Zhou will remain at the lotus field, planting lotus seedlings, managing the field, waiting for the arrival of the white cranes and receiving visitors who came to watch the birds.

Bird watchers, photographers and scholars from nearly 40 countries have visited the protection center. Thanks to the joint efforts of the Jiangxi Provincial Department of Forestry, the Nanchang Forestry Bureau, and the Nanchang High-tech Industrial Development Zone, the center was listed as a trial site for receiving an eco-compensation fund.

Some people have suggested that Zhou should invite tourists to enter the protection center and charge them admission fees. However, Zhou refused to do so as she was determined to minimize any disturbance to the birds. She even dedicated the money she had been compensated for after the demolition of her home to running the center, despite her family’s opposition.

In November 2018, when white cranes started to show up in the sky above the protection center, a parking lot which had just started construction near the farm scared the birds away. Zhou was sad and worried about this new development. She then reported the situation to the local government and in January 2019 the construction work was suspended.

At the beginning of the same year, six institutes, including the Nanchang Five Stars Siberian Cranes Sanctuary, signed a memorandum of understanding for white crane research and protection.

In August of the same year, Zhou underwent surgery to remove polyps from her stomach. On the fifth day after the surgery, when she was still hospitalized, Zhou got news that officials at the provincial level would inspect preparatory work for the upcoming Poyang Lake International Birdwatching Week. Believing that the event would be an opportunity for the development of the Nanchang Five Stars Siberian Cranes Sanctuary, Zhou immediately discharged herself from the hospital and returned to the sanctuary.

During the Poyang Lake International Birdwatching Week, the sanctuary garnered the attention of increasingly more people, and after some important domestic and international guests visited the protection center, they all spoke highly of it.

In the spring of 2020, the lotus farm was expanded to cover more than 666,666 square meters, and the infrastructure at the protection center was greatly improved. In the winter of the same year, the protection center received more than 2,800 white cranes.

In November 2020, a nature education center and a museum for the popularization of knowledge about white cranes were both established near the Nanchang Five Stars Siberian Cranes Sanctuary.

In 2021, more than 80,000 people visited the white crane protection center, a number that is bound to continue growing in the years ahead.