Confessions of a Hong Kong Naturalist by G.T. Reels. A new book

A memoir of ten years surveying wildlife in the wetlands, forests and mountains of Hong Kong’s New Territories and offshore islands

When we reached Hong Kong in November, this book was waiting for us, having been spotted in a bookshop earlier in the year. I cannot recommend it too highly. It does what is says on the cover in that the author describes the survey work he undertook with colleagues in the University of Hong Kong, for the WWF (Hong Kong) and for Kadoorie Farm in the 1990s. Most of the work was instigated by his boss, David Dudgeon who really put the study of Hong Kong wildlife on the map, both in terms of research and public policy for conservation. Graham Reels first went to Hong Kong in 1975 as a schoolboy so he has seen the vast changes that have occurred there over the past 40 years.

His story of the wildlife observed, of the surveys for the wide biodiversity survey, of his colleagues (many of whom remain in Hong Kong engaged in conservation), of students and of his personal life is well worth reading if only to show how much more we know now, than, say, in 1968 when we left Hong Kong to return to the U.K.

There are also delightful waspish asides about: competitive bird ringers, birding organisations and their classification of native versus introduced species; some of the personalities of university, conservation organisations and government players; the herpetologists from the U.S.A. who visited Hong Kong regularly, discovered new species but then deposited their collections in an American museum. Reels also records the time of horizontal balkanization of the biological sciences in the University (which was later reversed).

Graham Reels was also one of the founders of the newsletter Porcupine! That hugely successful (and now greatly missed) venture from the University, which reported finds in the field, conservation issues and the latest research ran from 1992 until 2005. All the issues are available online here. I was delighted to read that my old friend and former colleague of 54 years, Daniel Chan, then head of zoology, provided the money for printing out of departmental funds.

The land habitats of Hong Kong have improved over the past 50 years, as I have stressed many times to those unfamiliar with the Hong Kong countryside. The author returned to do more work in 2014-2015 and very near the end of the book writes:

     I…was struck by how much the forests had grown and matured from the 1990s—and by how the rural landscape of Hong Kong had been transformed since I had first seen it in the 1970s, when forest cover was thin and most hill slopes and summits were either dominated by fire-maintained grassland or completely denuded. This progressive increase in woodland thickness and extent has pulled in a steady stream of forest-associated wildlife (mammals, birds, butterflies, dragonflies), recolonising from forested areas in Guangdong province, in recent decades, and will continue to do so as long as the Country Parks and Special Areas are respected. I say ‘recolonise’ because I am in no doubt that these arrivals were  here in the past, before human activities almost completely removed the original natural forest in the last few centuries.

One of the causes of deforestation, particularly on Hong Kong Island was, of course, the Japanese Occupation of late 1941 until 1945. Firewood for cooking was in such short supply that the hillsides were denuded of trees by a desperate local population concerned with survival.

Graham Reels ends:

     It was a fascinating experience and reminded me of how fortunate I had been in the job that had come my way in the past; how such a career of stumbling wide-eyed discovery seemed so unlikely now, when so much more is known about Hong Kong’s astonishingly rich and precious natural history. It lent impetus to the writing of this memoir.
     I hope it was a tale worth telling.

Yes, it was.

Although the book has been for sale in the book shops I have not been able to find it for sale in other parts of the world. I know that many former Hong Kong residents will want a copy so here are the details of the publisher, Graham Reels’s brother (who—spoiler alert—appears in the book): Atratothemis Books, PO Box 6, San Tin Post Office,1A Castle Peak Road, New Territories, Hong Kong. ISBN 978-988-78049-1-8.