Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Thursday, February 21, 2008 0:00 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Sponsors
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!
▪	Save 75% for all hotels in Shanghai, Beijing and whole China. Lowest rates for Flights in China.

Quo vadis, Grus japonensis?

A “teenage” crane got lost in migration. Nobody knows for certain where the red crowned crane started its migration from, but it was found marooned near Hsinchu three years ago. It was wounded. The crane was then taken to the Taipei City Zoo, where vets removed shotgun shrapnel and nursed it back to health. It has now grown up. Nobody knows, again, how it should be dealt with. It is also known as a Japanese crane (Grus japonensis), the world’s second rarest bird. Quo vadis, Grus japonensis?

The best place for the now young adult crane, named Dan-Dan (Red-Red), to go is back where it came from. There are two populations of Japanese cranes in the world. One is found in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, but the birds there do not migrate. Other habitats include Manchuria and Siberia. North Asian cranes migrate to eastern China and Korea in wintertime. How Dan-Dan missed its migratory route is a mystery. The crane, the largest of the species, is sacred and seen as a symbol of fidelity, good luck and long life in Asia. In Japan, under the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns, anyone known to have killed a Japanese crane was executed.

Bird lovers and academics in Taipei believe Dan-Dan came from Manchuria. So they have been trying to ship it back there. Two cities in Manchuria are interested in taking it back. One of them, Zhalong in northern Manchuria, has a crane sanctuary and wants to welcome Dan-Dan home. The other, Panjin in southern Manchuria, wishes to adopt Dan-Dan so that it may star in an international marshland tourism festival scheduled for August. It would be better for Dan-Dan to go to the preserve at Zhalong.

But Dan-Dan can’t go. Its trip away from Taiwan is regulated by the Washington Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). However, the CITES isn’t an obstacle to Dan-Dan’s “home-coming.” The application of the CITES has given an alibi to both Beijing and Taipei to fight another battle in their ongoing war over sovereignty. The Washington convention only requires the shipping of rare animals to be certified. Beijing considers Taiwan a province and insists that domestic shipping from one area to another in the country needs no certification. The government authorities in Taipei will not allow Dan-Dan to leave Taiwan unless its trip is certified as an instance of trade between two sovereign, independent states.

The chances are nil for Dan-Dan to leave for China, if the giant panda episode is anything to go by. In the summer of 2004, China presented Lien, the then-chairman of the Kuomintang, a pair of giant pandas as a gift. The Washington convention was cited to veto the Taipei Zoo’s plan to keep the rare animals.

A modus vivendi could be easily arranged, if both sides were willing. But they are more stubborn than mules. One option, which isn’t a clever one, is to let Hokkaido adopt Dan-Dan. Well, if it has nowhere to go, let it stay in the Taipei zoo. The municipal authorities have yet to authorize Dan-Dan’s appearance in public. Academics should raise no objection to keeping the Japanese crane in captivity in Taipei, where a pair was kept in the old zoo at Yuanshan for decades as a popular attraction.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here