Migratory birds disappear in China storms

Yahoo News 18 Feb 08;

About 100,000 migratory birds disappeared in recent fierce snow storms in eastern China, state media reported Sunday.

About 95 percent of the world's white cranes, half of the white-naped cranes and 60 percent of swan geese are believed to migrate to a nature reserve at Poyang Lake each year in Jiangxi province, Xinhua news agency said.

Poyang Lake is China's biggest fresh water lake and an internationally significant wetland area.

Hundreds of workers at the reserve distributed grain, corn and vegetables but found only 40,000 birds, leaving about 100,000 unaccounted for, said Luo Shengjin, deputy director of the reserve.

Luo said no mass deaths had been uncovered and the birds could have migrated elsewhere. But the reserve was still concerned and was planning to employ helicopters to widen the search for the missing birds.

The worst weather in decades hit large areas of China last month, killing at least 107 people and causing more than 15 billion dollars in economic losses, according to official figures.

180,000 stranded as big freeze returns to China
Straits Times 18 Feb 08;

BEIJING - ALMOST 180,000 people have been stranded in the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan after snow and freezing weather returned, state media reported yesterday.

The bad weather blocked roads and caused blackouts.

More than 14,000km of roads have been affected, and 20,000 vehicles are stuck, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Like much of southern, central and eastern China, Yunnan had slowly been recovering from unseasonably snowy and icy weather which brought transport to a near standstill ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday and left millions without power.

However, snow returned to Yunnan on Thursday, Xinhua reported.

'The repairs were greatly hampered by the plateau climate, poor facilities and shortage of money. The workers do not even have special anti-freeze or snow-removing equipment,' Xinhua reported.

The government is also struggling to bring the electricity grid back up in Yunnan's second largest city, Qujing, where more than two million people are affected.

But in a piece of good news, the government announced yesterday that almost 90 per cent of the people who had experienced power cuts in large swathes of the country are now reconnected, with more than 14,000 damaged power lines repaired. As of Saturday night, power had been restored to 23.28 million people.

The winter storms - the worst in five decades - began on Jan 10 and have killed at least 107 people and caused 111.1 billion yuan (S$22 billion) in economic damage.

Yesterday, weather officials forecast that snow or sleet will continue to fall on southern China over the next three days, Xinhua said.

Yunnan, the south-western Tibet region, as well as Qinghai and Gansu provinces in north-west China would experience heavy snow or sleet.

REUTERS