Hundreds of tress have been cut down in two Plover Cove Country Park enclaves as villagers express anger at plan to create conversation and green belt areas.
ERNEST.KAO@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Tuesday, 19 April, 2016, 12:00am
Southern District councillor Paul Zimmerman examines felled trees at Plover Cove on North East New Territories. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Hundreds of trees have been felled indiscriminately across two Plover Cove Country Park enclaves in what some are describing as acts of angry “revenge” against a new government zoning plan for the area.
From the mangroves of Fung Hang to the wetlands of Kuk Po, sections of hiking paths once shaded by banyans and lychee trees are now left bare and exposed.
Tree trunks now hang from their stumps, rotting in the spring humidity. Small trees have been swept into Tai Wan or piled into mounds. A swathe of the fung shui woods behind Fung Hang village has also been felled.
Banners have been erected calling the government “shameless” and accuse it of “snatching away farmland” – a new outline zoning plan for the area has zoned 23 hectares of Kuk Po, Fung Hang and Yung Shue Au as “conservation area” and 57 hectares as “green belt”.
Villagers with private land in these areas are subject to tighter land-use restrictions.
“We are quite happy with the OZP, but obviously villagers are not,” said Paul Zimmerman of non-profit Designing Hong Kong. “We suspect they are killing vegetation to make it easier to get town planning approval for later developments.”
The felling began in the autumn of 2014 and has since accelerated. Indigenous villager Mark Sung, one of the few locals in the area who opposes the felling, said fellow villagers were committing the acts out of fury and protest.
“The entire area [around the Kuk Po wetlands] looks like its been bombed out. This is just an act of revenge,” he said. He fears the next victims will be some of the older trees in the area.
Kuk Po village representative Sung Wong-kway admitted to personally felling trees and said there were several reasons for it, including “routine trimming” – some trees had grown too tall, posing a danger to passersby – feng shui, and “some villagers just want to vent their anger”.
“The government’s zoning is inappropriate as a few million square feet of private land has been zoned for conservation without any sort of compensation or leasing or purchase agreement. The village zone in Kuk Po has been shrunk by a third,” he said. “Our next generation won’t even be able to farm, let alone build houses.” Villagers do not rule out “escalating action” by blocking off villages and roads, he said.
The zoning plan says the enclaves form “an integral part of the natural system of Plover Cove Country Park with a wide spectrum of natural habitats” that should be preserved and protected. Enclaves are parcels of land bordering or in country parks but not subject to park protection and laws.
A public inspection of the plan ends today. Valid representations will be published for public comments for three weeks.
The Planning Department said it had received complaints of tree felling and vegetation clearance but did not find any unauthorised development.
The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department acknowledged tree felling in government and private land but the lack of witnesses could not enable it to take enforcement action under the forests and countryside ordinance.
Designing Hong Kong’s Miffy Ng said the only way to stop further destruction to the Kuk Po and Fung Hang environment was to include a remark prohibiting tree felling and vegetation clearance in green belt or conservation area in the plan’s schedule of land uses.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1936975/tree-felled-revenge-government-zoning-plan
