Green Ark Program keeps bird monitoring online at Xuanmen Bay

When the first cold wave sweeps south, the first migratory birds arrive right on schedule. On Oct 7 in Xuanmen Bay National Wetland Park in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, the reed beds rippled in the wind like a golden sea, shimmering softly in the sunlight. Flocks of birds skimmed over the water, their wings cutting through the air and blending with the distant murmur of the tide into a natural symphony.

"Based on the monitoring data from the past two days, the migratory birds here right now are mainly geese and ducks as well as raptors — white-fronted geese, Eurasian teals, spot-billed ducks — numbering close to 1,000," said Chen Yanxue, a bird monitor, as she checked species and counts in the remote monitoring hall on the second floor of the wetland science museum. The live video she monitors comes from cameras powered by an integrated wind-solar-storage system.

"Monitoring used to mean working out in the field," she said. "Now the devices are spread widely and the power is reliable, so we no longer have to run around from place to place."

Xuanmen Bay National Wetland Park is an important stopover on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway: from October to April each year, tens of thousands of migratory birds arrive there. To give the overwintering birds a comfortable, welcoming "way station", local authorities launched a waterbird habitat improvement project in the park's core protection zone in 2015.

In 2023, the State Grid Green Ark Program was launched at the park. Working with the wetland management committee, the local power supply company built an integrated wind-solar-storage energy system, overcoming the unreliable supply that had long affected remote parts of the wetland. It also brought in supporting technologies such as scheduled drone patrols and acoustic monitoring to help observe rare birds, driving a digital and intelligent upgrade in biodiversity conservation.

"Since the program started, we no longer have to worry about the monitoring going offline," said Chen Yanxue. Since the Green Ark program was launched, it has supplied more than 140,000 kilowatt-hours of green electricity to the migratory bird monitoring devices, supporting nearly 13,000 hours of continuous observation.

Uninterrupted monitoring has brought more "sky spirits" into the record: as of the end of September, Xuanmen Bay National Wetland Park had logged 320 bird species in all, including 12 species under Class I national protection and 54 under Class II.