Plant project aims to restore bird habitat
Print Edition
A project to remove an invasive plant that poses an ecological threat to birds at the Chongming Dongtan Wetlands nature reserve will be completed early next year, the city’s major construction group said yesterday.
A 26-kilometer watertight cofferdam has been built in the wetland area, which has been invaded by smooth cordgrass that spreads rapidly and does not produce food for birds, said Su Xiangming, a senior executive of the Shanghai Construction Group, which is carrying out the project.
The company has developed a boat-mounted machine that is used to remove the grass. The roots are then allowed to soak in water for three months before being removed, Su said. The cofferdam will be demolished once the process has been completed.
The island district imported the grass, which is known for its thick roots, from the United State in the 1990s as a sand stabilizer, but it has taken over nearly half of the vegetative cover in the wetlands and made the environment unsuitable for birds.
Su said the cofferdam measure has had the desired effect — a large number of birds have returned to the wetland, attracted by the growth of the food-producing plants that had been displaced.
The group abandoned initial plans to burn the plants or use chemical fertilizer, fearing it would have a negative environmental impact, said Zhu Xiangming, chief engineer with the group.
The group is also restoring the saline and alkaline balance at the wetland’s beaches to encourage the growth of the area’s original plants, Zhu added.
The group recently completed the city’s largest land restoration project at the Shanghai International Tourism and Resorts Zone in the Pudong New Area, home of the Shanghai Disney Resort.
Over a million cubic meters of soil covering 7 square kilometers have been restored, which involved removing heavy metals and chemicals, Su said.
“The experience is being applied in the wetland project and will be used in other land restoration projects across the city,” Su said. For example, the group has begun restoring a 260,000-square-meter piece of land in the Chenshan Botanical Gardens in Songjiang to make the soil more suitable for growing plants, he added.
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