Green groups are concerned that Hong Kong’s John Lee could mislead the public about the ecological value of abandoned fishponds at the technopole site

The project will occupy over 600 hectares of land near the border, with half of the site earmarked for the development of the innovation and technology industry. The rest will become a city center with 54,000 apartments.

The project will cover about 150 hectares of the Wetland Conservation Area, while authorities plan to fill in 90 hectares of fish ponds as early as 2026. A proposed 338-hectare wetland park in Sam Po Shue will compensate for the ecological loss.

Wong Suet-mei, a senior conservation officer at the Bird Watching Society, said: “Lee’s comments may mislead the public into thinking that all fishponds in San Tin are abandoned. This reflects that the government may not be very clear about the ecological functions of inactive ponds.

Half of the ponds in the protected area were still active and contributed to a third of the local freshwater fish stock, while the rest were only abandoned in the past five years, she added.

The senior conservation officer said abandoned ponds still had ecological value because they provided habitat with less human intervention for Eurasian otters and some bird species.

A social media post by wildlife photographer Daphne Wong recently went viral when he shared photos of hundreds of migratory birds including black-headed spoonbills, Eurasian spoonbills and gray herons foraging in an abandoned fish pond in San Tin in February.

Lee earlier on Tuesday defended the Environmental Advisory Council’s conditional approval of an impact assessment report on the technopole after a four-hour meeting on Monday.

The general manager said the project “will progress as planned” and that fishponds in the area will be closed in accordance with all legal requirements.

“If the fishponds are abandoned or even devoid of fish, this cannot be a good and proactive environmental protection policy,” he said ahead of a weekly meeting of the Executive Council. “I am convinced that with a proactive conservation policy our overall environment and ecology can be effectively improved.”

Green light for environmental report on planned technology hub in Hong Kong near the border

Chan Hall-sion, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace, said Lee’s comments could confuse the public. She argued that research showed that abandoned fishponds were an important part of ecosystems and promoted wildlife diversity.

Green groups and academics were not convinced by the government’s argument that the resulting loss of habitat from filling a large area with fishponds could be “offset” by creating a smaller wetland nature park, Chan said.

“In the context of the ‘no-net-loss’ wetland principle widely adopted in Hong Kong and elsewhere, area plays a crucial role, as important as quality and other parameters,” she said. “We are disappointed that the government has reinterpreted the principle in the San Tin project without solid scientific support.”

Reject impact assessment for Hong Kong technopool project, say green groups

In February, the Town Planning Board agreed that the creation of a Sam Po Shue Wetland Conservation Park could offset the ecological loss caused by filling in the fishponds.

However, Conservancy Association campaign worker Kristy Chow Oi-chuen said the project lacked data on whether habitat loss could be properly compensated.

The association is among ten green groups that previously labeled the environmental impact assessment as flawed, citing 35 breaches of legal requirements and guidelines, as well as 27 serious technical assessment and data errors.

On Monday, the advisory council endorsed the technopool’s environmental impact assessment with eight conditions.

The conditions include requiring authorities to submit a habitat creation and management plan that lists compensation measures and future monitoring parameters.

But Wong of the Bird Watching Society said the government should have provided such a plan when it submitted the environmental impact assessment, in line with previous practice for projects occupying wetlands.

She added that it was unclear whether authorities would face any consequences if the ecological value were to decline significantly despite any compensation initiatives.

Final approval of the environmental impact report rests with the city’s environmental protection director.

The techno pool project also awaits approval from the Town Planning Board, which reviews zoning applications and passes recommendations to the town leader and government advisors to have the final say.