Paddy fields and mist nets

The train was approaching Taichung from the south but it could have been anywhere in Taiwan. The grey Smokey skies. The haze. The paddy fields. The vegetable gardens and fruit orchards. Typical lowland Taiwan farmland. The green paddy fields were dotted with the snow white of Cattle and Little Egrets. Doves, sparrows, drongos and swallows winged overhead or perched along the telephone lines and power cables. A first glance the scene appeared almost timeless. Baring the modern buildings and infrastructure the fields looked pretty much as they must have a century ago and a century before that. But they weren’t. The mud and stone retaining walls had been replaced by reinforced concrete walls. The rows of rice plants were too precise to have been planted by hand. Great hoses connected to large fertilizer pumps sprayed great white clouds of chemicals to nourish the growing rice. Rice farming had changed.

The young rice plants arrive in trays from the nursery factory. They have been grown in a synthetic material, not soil. The trays are loaded onto a mechanical sowing machine and planted in soils that have been plowed by tractors that replaced the water buffalo of yesteryear. The water level in the paddy is controlled by electric pumps or an elaborate system of concrete canals with great metal gates and valves. The fertilizer pumps will pump out their white chemical clouds and when the rice is ready a motorized harvester will reap the harvest. With no need for animal fodder, compost or thatched roofs the rice stalks are no longer needed. The great hut-shaped haystacks that were such a feature of the Taiwan countryside 50 years ago are gone. They have been made redundant by the machines. The stalks will just be burned and the great clouds of smoke will mark the harvest. Farming practices the world over have changed. The farms of our grandparents are but a memory.

A short time before the train had passed the village of Ershui. Ershui means two rivers or two waters. It is a quaint little place. It retains some old world charm. It’s set below lush green hills at the confluence of the Jhoushui and Chingshui Rivers. I know a man that came from Ershui. He lives in Taichung now. Anyway, one Saturday he had mentioned that he was going back to Ershui to harvest the rice in his father’s field. He went on to tell me that his father has a small rice paddy which he plants. He’s a retired civil servant but the rice paddy helps him feel connected to the land that his father and grandfather once farmed. He then went on to explain that they don’t actually eat the rice because the water used for irrigation is so unhealthy and full of chemicals that they feel it would be unwise to eat the rice. He then added that an elderly aunt; he gave her age as 85; still eats the rice though. She feels attached to the fields that sustained her and her family for so many generations. She says it’s the most delicious rice in the world. They let her eat the rice because she is so old. They don’t tell her about the chemicals. I asked what they did with the rest of the rice. He replied the paddy was very small so it didn’t produce much rice. They put aside a few bags for the old aunt and the rest they got rid of. He didn’t elaborate. For a moment I wondered how much “dirty” rice must enter the system; and then the thought faded into the haze.

If you look out the train window you will notice that many fields and orchards have thin bamboo poles sticking up all over the place. From a distance they appear as if they must be some kind of marker. And yes, they do mark something. They are the uprights for mist nets. Thin plastic monofilament nets that are almost invisible to the naked eye and are placed to trap birds. Not just trap birds but to kill birds; to exterminate them.


 
A bunting hangs helpless in a farmer’s mist net.


In grandpa’s time there were no mist needs. They made do banging tins together to scare off the birds. Sure they hunted the birds but the numbers they killed just were never as many as you can trap with a mist net.

Birds are indicators of the health of the environment. While the situation has not been ideal, many species of bird have successfully adapted to the farmland environment created by humanity over the millennia. But the farmland environment that they adapted to was not soaked in clouds of fertilizer and insecticide sprays. It was not maintained by great mechanical machines. Mist nets did not form invisible barriers of death. And so across the planet farmland species are in decline. And data from national bird surveys have shown sudden alarming plunges in the numbers of some of our most common bird species; the Eurasian Tree Sparrow and the Striated Swallow.

We know that bird numbers in general are in decline. Some may barely show that they are declining. Some may even increase in the short-term as a new opportunity opens up but in most instances this is false hope. It is merely a hill on the slope down the mountain. An example would be a raptor species that temporarily thrives because as the forest is cut down hunting becomes easier because prey has less cover. But ultimately the prey will disappear with the loss of the forest and the raptor starts sliding down the slope again, this time only faster.

We don’t know what has caused such a sudden increase in the decline of some farmland species in Taiwan since 2009. Perhaps a combination of some new chemical coupled with the loss of habitat and, and, and… It takes time to pinpoint the definite causes of the sudden dramatic decline. What is known is that great numbers of farmland birds are perishing in nets. Nobody knows how many and on the whole nobody is monitoring this. But yet we permit this indiscriminate practice to continue unchecked.

A few years ago I recall a student who was prosecuted for torturing a parrot when footage of the student doing so was posted on the internet. It is right that this person was prosecuted for cruelty and abuse of an animal. But surely the people that erect mist nets with the purpose of trapping birds which will die a slow painful and lingering death of thirst, exhaustion and exposure are just as guilty of cruelty to animals as the student that was. And what of bycatch? Those countless birds of species that don’t eat grains or fruits that perish in the nets. In my observations, they often greatly outnumber those that do eat crops and fruit. Many of these birds eat insects and so actually benefit the farmer. Sure, farmers have a right to protect crops. But like this? And when we know that so many species are in such serious decline?


 
Almost invisible to the naked eye, a mist net is set along the edge of a paddy field.


I look at my watch and I’ll be in Taichung in about ten minutes. My view of the green paddy fields is suddenly blocked. The woman next to the window has just pulled down the blind to shut out the morning sun. Her eyes return to the screen of her smart phone. I look along the aisle and think who gives a damn about the sparrows anyway!