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Natural History

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Ir is easy for a visitor to miss the delights of Hong Kong's country- side, so overpowering is the impact of its city life. Even residents can forget, under the pressure of their daily lives, that on their doorsteps lie peaceful farming areas, empty hills or quiet woodland walks. Areas of special interest to naturalists and biologists are the water catchments, notably those of Tai Tam, Kowloon and Jubilee reservoirs, the hills of Lantau and Lamma Islands and the Sai Kung peninsula. In these areas are many miles of interesting walks through tropical and subtropical vegetation, and here as elsewhere in the Colony there is a surprising amount of wild life.

WILD LIFE

Due to rapid urbanization and, what is more serious, an increase in illegal hunting and trapping, many wild mammals are sharply declining in numbers. If the present rate of decline remains un- checked, it is expected that the larger mammals will all have disap- peared from the Colony within the next five years. The government is considering ways and means of best conserving the remaining indigenous species, many of which are of great scientific interest. Of the larger mammals, it is still possible to encounter Barking Deer on Hong Kong Island and at night to hear their coarse bark, but elsewhere in the Colony they are now exceedingly rare. These small, rather secretive, golden brown deer stand about 30 inches high, and the males, unlike other deer, have simple antlers born on fur covered pedicels. Wild Boar have all but disappeared from the Colony, as have the South China Red Fox, Five-Banded Civet and the Otter, all recorded only once or twice during the last three

years.

Mammals which no longer occur here, but did so until fairly recently, are the Crab-eating Mongoose, Rhesus Monkey, Wild Red Dog or Dhole, Tiger and Leopard. Reports of a tiger in the