Who will have the honour of owning a garden home to a large flock of wild storks? It is the largest stork garden in Vietnam, with more than 10,000 storks and 3,000 night herons, and its current owner, a retired teacher, Dang Dinh Quyen, has had that honour.
Each evening, his 3ha garden is covered with the white of storks. Located in Tan Phuc hamlet, Dao My commune, Lang Giang district, in the northern province of Bac Giang, this stork garden is at risk because of the ignorance of local authorities, attacks of bird hunters, and the discouragement of the owner, who has been taking care of and making friends with storks for nearly 30 years.Where did the birds come from?
In the early 1980s, Dao My was a thinly populated area. Quyen’s house in Tan Phuc hamlet was next to a low hill of bamboo and sandalwood trees. In front of the hill was an immense lagoon surrounded by rows of bamboo. Birds, especially storks, gathered there in dense flocks.
When the lagoon was divided into small parts to allocate to families, farmers chopped down bamboo and drained the lagoon to create fields. Storks moved to nearby hills of sandalwood trees but they were hunted everywhere. However, as a habit, they still held on to this area. They finally found their shelter when they migrated to Quyen’s hill.
Quyen said in 1982, several hundred storks began residing in his garden. He thought it was lucky to have birds coming to his garden so he didn’t drive away the birds, but grew more trees to serve them. Gradually, storks and herons flocked en masse to his hill and numbered around 4,000 heads in 1984. Hunters appeared, using hackbuts and airguns to kill storks. One time while trying to protect his storks, Quyen was nearly hit by hunters’ shots. Storks went to Quyen’s garden because he protected them and allowed them to perch in his trees.
Some locals supported him, some sneered at him but Quyen thought storks chose his garden as their home so he was responsible for protecting them.
“Once, a stork was caught in a trap and returned to my garden with the trap. Other storks tried to help the unlucky stork escape from the trap but they couldn’t. Storks were scared and ran away. My garden was quiet for more than one month but finally they returned to me,” Quyen recalled. Quyen said he could tell interesting stories about storks for several days.
It is strange that while Quyen’s garden is next to his neighbour’s garden, birds only perch in Quyen’s trees, though his trees and his neighbour’s trees are next to each other.
In the early 1990s, local residents chopped down bamboo and sandalwood trees to grow litchi since litchi was more lucrative. To protect the birds, Quyen didn’t follow the movement and planted litchi around his garden only.
The 3ha stork garden currently has over 10,000 white and grey storks and around 3,000 night herons. In the breeding season, from April to September, some birds migrate to other places since they don’t have enough space to build their nests but they return to the garden several months later. The number of birds suddenly increases in the winter.
To earn some money, Quyen previously grew some litchi trees around the garden but to keep his storks, he recently had to cut down 200 litchi trees to grow bamboo and sandalwood to create more space for storks.
His effort to protect storks was honoured by the “For the Environment” award of the Ministry of Science and Technology (currently the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment).
Storks and sufferings
If Quyen had wanted to profit from storks there would not have been such a stork garden. His spiritual and physical sacrifice has been great. Loving storks, Quyen has had to pay a lot. He has four sons but none of them have helped him take care of the storks. His wife, Dang Thi Minh, doesn’t like storks because they don’t benefit her family, but make her husband tired and busy. She has often been upset and asked him to sell the garden.
When the bird flu epidemic occurred, many people advised Quyen to drive away the storks to not be infected with bird flu but he couldn’t. Quyen and his storks were unharmed by bird flu.
As the flock developed bigger, Quyen’s 3ha garden became narrower. Quyen had to plant many new trees to replace trees that died of stork feces but lack of land for storks was a worry for Quyen. After retirement, Quyen devoted his whole time to storks. He stayed in a small house in the garden and he often had sleepless nights patrolling the garden.
The owner of the largest stork garden in Vietnam, which could have yielded a lot of money, is very poor. He still remembers the day he received 13 foreign guests. Quyen repeatedly asked them to sit down. One of the guests replied in Vietnamese: “Co ghe dau ma ngoi” (We have no chair to sit on). Quyen was ashamed. At the time, he was living in a bare tent.
Since Quyen received the Ministry of Science-Technology Da Nang Environment’s “For Environment” award in 2001, his house in Dao My commune in the northern province of Bac Giang has been inundated with visitors.
It is not uncommon to see fancy cars of government officials parked outside his house – all eager for a peek at his burgeoning sanctuary. Quyen told his wife: “You see! If I had packs of gold, I would have not had the chance to see so many distinguished guests as I do now.”
One local official, so besotted with the elegant birds, told Quyen: “I’m willing to pay to see some storks living in my garden”.
While his neighbours saw the praise heaped on him and the cavalcade of dignitaries rolling up to the gate, few saw the losses he was incurring. At the time, a kilo of litchi fetched VND12, 000 at the market, but Quyen didn’t cash in his 3ha garden for fear of disturbing the birds.
Suggestions were made to sell tickets to visitors, but it didn’t sit right with Quyen. After 30 years in the stork game, his family is still very poor.
“He will die one day in that garden with nothing to show for it. It is the best to sell it and free us from the trouble,” said Quyen’s wife.
His wife knows first-hand the sacrifices his family has made to look after the birds. Every day, she travels 10km to the market to off-load fruit, while her husband forbids the sale of the expensive and ancient trees that dot his farm.
At the Ngoc Nhi stork garden in Ba Vi, Ha Tay, stork meat is sold to tourists. The owner of another stork garden asked Quyen to sell him birds. Quyen’s wife was initially pleased, but was quickly rebuffed by her husband for entertaining the idea.
Over the last 30 years, Quyen has welcomed thousands of storks into his garden. During that time, he has had to fight off poachers and bear the economic losses of not being able to farm his garden while the storks rule the roost. But, he has also tapped into a wealth of knowledge about the birds and has been invited to give lectures on the subject.
Quyen said if he had had more money, he would have bought more land to turn his garden into a stork preservation area, which would have been an ideal destination for students. But he was never able to do this because he never received the assistance of the authorities.
State assistance needed
As protecting the environment and nature has become a significant target, Quyen’s stork garden should be protected by the state. If they continue neglecting the Quyen’s of the world, a greater number of sanctuaries will disappear.
Quyen said he asked for help from many local agencies but received little. He says he received VND45 million from a German environmental organisation after he was presented the environmental award, VND6 million from his district government and VND8 million from Bac Giang province. He invested the funds in walls, sentry boxes and more trees.
Tired, poor and frustrated, the tipping point came recently – he finally put his stork garden up for sale to anyone with more than VND700 million ($43,500) to buy it.
“Before I decided to sell the garden, I told local officials that I would donate the sanctuary to the state. I hoped they would manage it so it would attract more birds, but they didn’t want it,” Quyen said.
Quyen plans to sell the garden to a man from Hanoi for nearly VND1 billion, but is concerned about the bird’s welfare after he leaves them.
(Source: LD)
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