Semi-autonomous city’s integration with southern China has sparked fears for rural areas known for their biodiversity. Barry Ma peers through the lens of his high-powered telescope and raises his arm as he points in excitement. “Here!” he says in a hushed voice. “Look here.” Ma has spotted a pair of little grebes — a duck-like bird, but an unrelated species — swimming on a pond in Hong Kong’s wetlands, nestled in the city’s rural New Territories. An eco-guide for the World Wide Fund for Nature Hong Kong (WWF-Hong Kong), Ma is leading a small group of visitors through the Mai Po Nature Reserve under a bright sun on a humid morning. He identifies a number of species inside the 380-hectare (939-acre) reserve: white-breasted water hens; yellow-bellied prinias; black-winged stilts; Oriental magpie-robins; great egrets and little egrets. But his enthusiasm is tempered by an uncertain future for the wetlands, which are also home to frogs, fiddler crabs, pangolins, water buffalos — even a handful of Eurasian otters, an elusive nocturnal mammal. China’s rise casts shadow over Hong Kong’s teeming wetlands
