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Our News
Towards protecting our Country Parks and Country Park enclaves
Recently, Hong Kong has seen some heated debates regarding the issue of utilizing areas of Country Park land for housing purposes. There are certain updates on the recent work WWF has been doing to protect Hong Kong’s Country Parks and its 77 Country Park enclaves.
First, WWF firmly believes that Country Parks are legally protected for their outstanding conservation, education, recreation and landscape value. There are other, more appropriate, options available for housing such as brown field sites and land reserved for small houses in the New Territories. WWF opts to take a long-term, “big picture” view of the situation. Essentially, Country Parks and their enclaves should remain unaffected by development - now and in the future.
WWF, along with more than 20 other groups, recently formed the “Save Our Country Parks” group to lobby the government and the Country and Marine Parks Board to safeguard these precious pieces of our natural heritage. Recently, draft zoning plans have emerged which permit large numbers of small house developments on privately-owned land in some ecologically-sensitive Country Park enclaves. WWF and Save Our Country Parks are extremely worried that these will have adverse impacts on the integrity of our Country Parks. We challenge the plans of having large area of “Village Type Development” zone, and ask that the appropriate conservation zoning be applied to these areas immediately, to ensure that adequate protection is maintained.
Our Country Park enclaves are “victims” of a lack of planning and development control. In 2010, both WWF supporters and Hong Kong citizens reacted spontaneously to WWF’s call for a petition to save Tai Long Sai Wan (TLSW) from unauthorized land excavation which had come about as a result of loopholes in our conservation policy. The TLSW incident caused a public outcry, after which the Chief Executive promised to protect Country Park enclaves from development. As a direct consequence, TLSW was recently gazetted to be included as part of the Sai Kung East Country Park effective from 30 December 2013. We sincerely urge all legislators to support the finalization of this process.
WWF will continue to work towards protecting our Country Parks. Our experts will offer advice and with the help of Save Our Country Parks, other green groups and the Hong Kong public, WWF’s Environmental Watchdog team will constantly monitor that the integrity of our Country Parks is strictly upheld.
Citizens hold the key to resolving the on-going conflict between development and conservation, through active participation in the formulation of Hong Kong’s first Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan under the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Convention asks for a participatory approach and the consideration of conservation in all development projects. Together, we can preserve Hong Kong’s natural legacy and play a part in charting Hong Kong’s conservation history.