HK group slams DSPA for mistaken diagrams on dolphin habitats

The Environmental Protection Bureau (DSPA) has mistaken the dolphin relocation passages near Macau for the species’ habitats, the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society (HKDCS) has said on its Facebook page.

Referring to the DSPA’s webpage dedicated to the proposed “ecological island,” which is actually a landfill for construction wastes to be located off the southern coast of Coloane, the HKDCS said DSPA diagrams purporting to depict the area of activities of the Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphin have actually doubled the size of the area.

The society said the webpage contains the first official reference to the dolphin’s activities near Macau.

“The narrow relocation passages located on the south of Coloane and the west of the Pearl River Estuary of the humpbacked dolphin have suddenly become very wide in the diagram,” the society noted in the Facebook post. The HKDCS said the relocation passages are different from habitats.

The society cited accessible documentation to stress that, although the dolphin resides within 10 km from the southern Chinese coast due to the flow of the Pearl River and the distribution of prey, the dolphin is active within 5 km of the coast most of the time.

It said this is the case especially on the south of Macau. The relocation passages, it added, clash with the proposed location of the future landfill.

Therefore, the society criticized the DSPA for distorting facts by mistakenly identifying the relocation passages as habitats.

Despite seeing the aforementioned documentation submitted to the DSPA during the earlier public consultation, the society said, “the bureau is still declining to admit the fundamental fact that the future landfill will block the passages of the dolphin.” It said the bureau suspiciously attempts to mislead public opinion with unreliable diagrams.

The diagrams are not only erroneous, the society said, but also have no referential use.

To further support its comments, the society said the dolphin had started evading the area as far as 6 km from the reclaimed area on the Hong Kong side of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. The area of impact can be 30 times as large as the reclaimed area, the society noted.