By Xu Chunzi (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-27 10:16

Sun Quanhui and his colleague unfold the long wings of a common buzzard, which stretch out like a great fan against the frigid wind. Sun smoothes the bird's feathers and puts it on the ground.

A staff member of the Beijing Raptor Rescue Center frees a white-tailed eagle in this undated photo. [China Daily]

The buzzard flaps its wings and takes off toward the skies of Shisanling, a reservoir 40 minutes outside Beijing.

"He's home now," says Sun, the 34-year-old manager of the Beijing Raptor Rescue Center (BRRC).

The buzzard is one of more than 2,000 birds of prey that have been rescued by the BRRC since its establishment in 2001.

Founded by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the BRRC provides medical treatment, care and rehabilitation training to predatory birds that are injured, lost, or confiscated in illegal trades in and around Beijing.

Sun and his five staff members at the BRRC are experts in ornithology, animal behavior and husbandry, but the first criterion for working at the BRRC is that you must love animals.

For Sun, who has spent most of his life studying and taking care of birds, this love is necessarily unrequited.

"Raptors belong in the wild and it would be my failure if they got attached to me," Sun says, adding he hopes the birds attack him if they meet again.

Wildlife, ironically, doesn't always know how to be wild. China's countless urban centers have severely diminished wildlife habitats. Raptors, being more vulnerable to environmental changes than other animals, often find themselves lost and confused in the city.

The BRRC receives lost or injured birds of prey almost daily in Beijing, the country's second biggest city which is on a major migration route.

Beijingers are still largely unfamiliar with raptors - some mistakenly contact the BRRC to report their tortoise is sick or that they have spotted a snake. But Sun is glad that people are warming to the concept of wildlife conservation.

"A few years ago people would call us and ask how much the raptor they found was worth, or whether it was 'tasty'. Now they want to know whether it belongs to a state-protected species."

All raptors, including hawks, eagles, vultures and owls are state-protected wildlife. Since they perch at the top of the food chain, many of them face extinction.

"Since the birds (we receive) suffer mostly from human-related injuries, we are responsible for providing the best care we can manage," Sun says.

It is also BRRC's responsibility to put down a raptor if it is injured too badly or has been domesticated for so long it cannot survive in the wild.

Euthanasia and animal welfare are relatively new concepts in China and the BRRC, which trains its staff in California and Hong Kong, hopes to be a role model. Its mission is urgent since many wildlife rescue centers in China only offer basic services.

BRRC staffers put a ring on the leg of each bird before releasing it into its natural habitat for further monitoring. Occasionally, these birds turn up at the center again.

These are bittersweet moments - it's good to see old friends, but it also means that the birds are not adapting to the environment or are being hunted.

Professor Zhou Haixiang at Shenyang Institute of Technology in Liaoning Province, says raptor hunting in Northeast China is "extremely serious" and is partly due to rigid govenment conservation policies and a lack of awareness among locals.

Zhou believes that for illegal hunting to stop the government must factor humans and specific local situations into their ecological equations. Unless the interests of both humans and animals are considered, wildlife protection policies will remain ineffective, he says.

While most raptors are hunted for their meat, some are captured live and smuggled to Middle Eastern countries, where they are trained and kept as status symbols. Hundreds of saker falcons are confiscated in illegal trading every year, though most do not survive the ordeal.

People's attitudes to these bird are changing, but at a slow pace. Earlier this month, the Beijing Municipal Gardening and Forestry Bureau published an expanded list of wildlife to be protected. The 57 additions include popular pet birds such as mynas and laughingthrushes.

Starting next year, trading these animals will be illegal and offenders will be fined 10 times what they paid for the animals.

Beijingers have a tradition of bird keeping, but they will have to stick to captive bred birds from now on, says Wang Minzhong from the Gardening and Forestry Bureau.

"I've only heard supportive voices (for the new laws) so far," he says.

For Sun, a real love of birds means setting them free. The BRRC's intention is to help people appreciate this and in addition to its welfare work it also conducts educational campaigns to advocate wildlife conservation.