Li Jiahe has been fighting for a handful of birds he has never seen in a place he has never visited.

Since April, the 24-year-old Chinese engineering student has devoted himself to protecting the spoon-billed sandpiper, a critically endangered shorebird, and their wintering habitat in the southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, which was set to be impacted by a planned highway.

The highway, approved on April 30, would run along the coast, shortening travel times between villages and Beihai, a port city on the province’s southern shore. 

But it would also cut through mudflats where nearly 20,000 waterbirds from 46 species stop to feast on shellfish and rest during migration and winter, including the spoon-billed sandpiper, whose global population is estimated at 443 individuals.

Li was one of thousands of advocates online who flooded local authorities and international organizations with emails, letters, and phone calls opposing the project.

On May 25, China’s central environmental authorities halted the plans. The provincial government then stated it would evaluate alternatives while seeking input from environmental experts and the public.

For decades, China has promoted ecological protection. But balancing economic development with conservation — and reconciling differences between central and local priorities — remains a challenge. And although Li, along with other advocates, is heartened by the shift in governmental action, they worry about the efficacy of raising public awareness online to address environmental problems.

“I don’t know what the final outcome will be,” Li told Sixth Tone. “We’re all ordinary people. We are small. But if we can raise awareness and plant a seed in people’s minds, that’s already a good thing.”

The fight

A small, white bird with brown streaking and a broad, black bill swayed its round body across Li’s phone screen. In the hallway of a university building in the Netherlands, he stopped scrolling, paused, and frowned.

The bird, he learned, was rarer than the giant panda and under the highest level of protection in China. 

Guangxi officially recorded 14 spoon-billed sandpipers along the coast of Beihai’s Xichang Town in 2021, a number that qualifies the wetland as of “international importance” under international conservation criteria. 

Despite this, plans were already underway to build a highway in the area, including through the sandpiper’s wintering habitat.

As part of China’s national expressway network, the proposed six-lane highway would be approximately 47 kilometers long, with a total investment of 5.1 billion yuan ($710 million). Construction was expected to take three years. 

According to an environmental impact assessment published on April 7 this year, the project would occupy over 24 hectares of “important spoon-billed sandpiper habitat” and includes “ecologically sensitive areas” such as mangrove wetlands. Under Chinese law, environmental impact assessments are required before construction projects can proceed.

The report argued that the highway qualified for an exemption under China’s Wildlife Protection Law, which normally requires infrastructure projects to avoid important wildlife habitats. The proposed route, it said, was a major national infrastructure project, and alternative routes were “constrained” by coastal geography and existing road networks.

It is no longer clear who first raised concerns online. But by April 15, the issue had reached Li.

“It felt like the plot of ‘Hoppers’ was happening in real life,” he said, referring to the recent Pixar movie in which animals must stop their home from being destroyed by a highway. Li said that he “kept crying” during the film.

Like the film’s protagonist, Li decided to act. After researching the issue online and learning that spoon-billed sandpipers are migratory birds whose survival depends on a chain of wetlands across continents, he emailed the Ramsar Convention, also known as the Convention of Wetlands, an intergovernmental treaty organization of which China is a member.

“It was the first time I’d taken action on an issue like this,” Li said. “I don’t want any species to go extinct in our generation.”

At around the same time, Liu Yang, a 24-year-old legal professional living in Guangxi, also saw the news. Outside of work, Liu is a birdwatcher who manages an online birding group with more than 200 members.

Together with fellow birdwatchers, he repeatedly called the phone numbers listed on the environmental assessment notice and sent emails to local government departments, while others mailed physical letters.

“Birds can’t speak for themselves. We have a responsibility to speak for them,” Liu told Sixth Tone.

Meanwhile, memes and cartoons of spoon-billed sandpipers carrying messages such as “save me” spread across social media. Many users called for “helping the little spoon,” using a Chinese nickname for the bird. Like Li, many social media users said this was the first time they had taken action to help conserve wildlife. 

Turning point

At first, advocates thought they had lost the battle. On April 30, city authorities formally approved the environmental assessment, bringing the birds one step closer to losing the mudflat.

“When I first saw a spoon-billed sandpiper on my phone, it looked so tiny to me,” Li said. “On a planet this big, if we can’t even make room for something so small, how can we talk about bigger issues?”

Officials from the Ramsar Convention exchanged several rounds of emails with Li, who, along with other volunteers, compiled and submitted additional information about the road project. BirdLife International, a global bird protection network, also referred the issue to its colleagues in China. 

But in May, the emails from both organizations stopped.

Liu received a response from the city, but it repeated the assessment’s conclusions: the project had passed ecological and technical reviews, and “mitigating measures” would be taken “as much as possible.”

Experts disagreed with the government’s logic of “build first, mitigate later,” especially given the spoon-billed sandpiper’s tiny population and the difficulty of breeding the species in captivity.

“Spoon-billed sandpipers and many other shorebirds are highly dependent on coastal mudflat wetlands throughout migration and wintering,” said Professor Ma Zhijun, a bird ecologist at Shanghai’s Fudan University. “They are also very faithful to specific sites.”

“For birds, these wetlands are like airplane refueling stations,” Ma said. “If you destroy one, planes can’t stop there, and the fuel from the previous stop won’t be enough. The result is a crash.”

He cited the large-scale reclamation of tidal flats in South Korea in 2006, which is believed to have caused around 90,000 great knots, another shorebird species, to perish. 

Jia Yifei, an associate professor of ecology and nature conservation at the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Studies Center at Beijing Forestry University, said that the spoon-billed sandpiper relies on habitats across more than a dozen countries. 

Each autumn, the birds migrate from northeastern Siberia over the Yellow Sea to wintering grounds in southern China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.

A turning point in the case came on May 9, when a central environmental inspection team happened to arrive in Guangxi for a monthlong review. The inspection program, launched over the past decade to strengthen environmental enforcement, rotates through provinces and accepts public complaints.

Online, users began sharing tips on how to call the inspectors’ hotline and send letters.

According to a May 25 statement by Guangxi authorities, in accordance with the central government, a provincial investigation had been sent to Beihai and concluded that the environmental assessment lacked a sufficient scientific basis. Construction was suspended.

Four days later, the provincial government convened and pledged to evaluate alternative routes while “actively responding to public concerns” through hearings, consultations, and expert discussions. 

Striking a balance

Liu said a small number of supporters are sometimes “extreme” in their proposals, such as calling for the road to be scrapped entirely or sharing images of the highway number crossed out in red.

“In my social media chat, I always tell people to see things from the villagers’ perspective,” Liu said. “The project is meant to improve people’s lives and solve transportation problems for communities along the route. Guangxi is our home too. We want it to develop and prosper.”

Jia, the ecology professor, said the suspension showed that “some bottom lines must be respected.” In his view, shifting the route by a few kilometers could preserve both transportation goals and critical habitat.

Ma added that ecological protection and economic development do not always have to clash. In some parts of China, bird conservation has helped villages develop birdwatching tourism, creating new sources of income. Birdwatching itself has become increasingly popular, with an estimated 340,000 enthusiasts nationwide as of 2023.

As for Liu, he still remembers the first time he saw a spoon-billed sandpiper in the wild.

To find it, he spent an entire day in February 2024 walking across sun-baked mudflats after the tide had receded. Then, just a few meters away, among a flock of shorebirds, he spotted the spoon-shaped bill sweeping side to side through the mud. He was so excited that he scarcely dared to breathe.

On another birding trip, hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of waterbirds suddenly descended around him. “Being surrounded by birds felt incredible,” said Liu. “I want to do something for them. It feels as natural as protecting my friends.”

“We often say that with endangered birds like the spoon-billed sandpiper, every year could be one of the last chances to see them,” he said. “I hope future generations will still have the chance to see these lovely creatures.” 

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: Spoon-billed sandpipers forage on coastal mudflats in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nov. 23, 2024. VCG)