Message from the Chairperson It seems yesterday but the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society is now celebrating her 60th anniversary. We could still survive nowadays after all these years mainly because of the tremendous contribution of our predecessors who have built a solid foundation with their wisdom and endeavor. It is a sorrowful year for the Society as two former chairperson passed away one after the other. Mr. Michael Webster has put a lot of effort on promoting birdwatching. He also set up a very strict standard for keeping bird record that we owed him a lot even today. The unconditional devotion in promoting birdwatching by Mr. Gavin Cooper also lead to a prosperous development of the society during the 90s especially in terms of membership. Today, we continue to uphold the will of our predecessors and 2000 members towards a broader participation in bird conservation, education and study. Especially in the past few years, the number of staff has increased from a dozen to 20, and the directions of development have become more concrete. The results of our research and study is always the most invaluable asset of the Society which provide the basis of our different work. All these bird data still rely on the contribution and support of members, birders and staff to maintain us as the authority of bird conservation in Hong Kong. Regarding policy advocacy and monitoring of environmental issues, the Society heavy relied on the Conservation Committee lead by Mr. Mike Kilburn in a voluntary basis in the past has already make a difference. You may still remember the Long Valley campaign in the year 2000. Today, we are lucky to have one excellent staff taking up most of the work and more effective in voicing out our opinion. Thirdly, the two large management agreement projects, namely the “Nature Conservation Management for Long Valley” and the “Hong Kong Fishpond Conservation Scheme” have marked our cooperation with stakeholder such as farmer and fishermen to manage the sites with high ecological value especially for birds. More importantly, these projects have already exceeded their ambit of nature conservation which incorporating agriculture, fishery, local economics, traditional culture, environmental education, landscape conservation, sustainable development, etc. The development of China programme in the past decade has reminded us that species protection is the new emphasis besides the capacity building of NGOs in mainland China, especially for those threatened species. We have cooperated with the local birdwatching organizations, general public, government departments and forestry policeman to clear the mist nest along the coast of Guangdong and Guangxi Province in the past 2 years. This is a very successful example which demonstrated that local people and government department could work together in protecting birds. You will certainly agree that education is one of the founding stones to make conservation a success. However, we find that “nature education” is somewhat ignore by the formal education for a long long time and our children has been sadly detached with nature. Last year, we have launched a programme to kindergarten students which made use of games, handicraft, storytelling, etc. to convey the message of nature conservation to the children. They were also brought to the outdoor environment to experience the wonder of the nature. Another creative project incorporating nature sound, art creation, human sense experience and knowledge transfer has just been launched, marking a new start of our “art in nature education” towards our future. By the way, the “Fishpond Art Festival” under the fishpond project will be held in the coming months. You are most welcome to join. For the member activities, regular outings, talks, courses have been arranged accordingly in the past decade which fit different needs of our members and birders. Your support and advice is always the most important pillar of our success. In future, the burden in our shoulder will only be heavier than before. Take the egretry case as an example, one occasional absurd misbehaviour could use up most of the energy and time of our responsible officer and other supporting staff. Or the uplisting of threatened species such as the Yellow-breasted Bunting from vulnerable to endangered status within a short time, or even became critically endangered in the near future could only urge us to do something before it is too late. If we want to stop uplisting this bird to extinct, your support is critical! Mr Apache Wai Man LAU Chairperson of The Hong Kong Bird Watching Society