PENN
In
and other southern ricebowl provinces seems almost too obvious. the University lab here a civet devoured 5 rats at a single sitting.
A national campaign to 'Kill All the Birds' some years ago in China produced disastrous posts. Depletion now of raptors essential to the environment as scavengers and as bird and rat caters not only large tracts of China, but their winter and summer habitats to the north and south as well. The consensus in Hong Kong is that China's other problems have prevented any real advances in the study of ecology.
Morton
affects
Only comparatively recently has the western world begun to fully appreciate the consequences of what they were doing with regard to the environment. Now ... looking at available Chinese material one gets the impression that they're at the position that the West was, say, 20 years ago. That is, they are still determining what animals they have got, what plants they've got, what their natural resources are. They haven't come to the refined aspects of biology yet.
The material in my own field that I've seen which has come from China is - shall we say naive.
Predator-prey populations fluctuate together in response to natural factors such as drought, flood, and availability of food. The unnatural factor of Man's intervention, attacking predators at perhaps an extreme low in the cycle, can quickly lead to extinction.
A small carnivore's recovery potential with only 3 or 4 young a year is very slow compared with the rapid reproduction of rats and mice that they prey upon.
Specially hard pressed here, we think, is the pangolin, the Chinese Scaly Anteater, a nocturnal creature which lives on insect life and spends the daylight hours rolled up in a tight little ball. The scales of this interesting little animal are thought by the Cantonese to improve lactation in nursing mothers. The pangolin is listed now by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the IUCN, as potentially endangered. But they enter Hong Kong in several thousands a year.
Romer
We don't know very much about the breeding habits of this species, but they usually have one young born at a time, in the spring, which lives on its mother's back. It's born, of course, in a burrow. Pangolins live in burrows. But it rides about on its mother's back.