The place

The Liao River delta is a flat world of mud, water and reeds where the river meets the Bohai Sea. On the salty flats near the shore grows Suaeda salsa, a low succulent plant that turns from green to red as it matures, so by September and October wide areas of the tidal flats glow red. Behind them stretch vast reed marshes, one of the largest in Asia, and beyond those rice paddies and oil wells. Tidal creeks wind through the flats, and the horizon is low and open. In spring and autumn the air is full of the sound of migrating birds: cranes, gulls, geese and waders.

History

The delta is young land, built by sediment carried down by the Liao and its branches and constantly reshaped by the sea. Farmers and fishers have lived on its edges for centuries, harvesting reeds for weaving and paper and gathering seafood on the flats. In the twentieth century large areas were drained for rice and fish ponds. The discovery of oil led to the founding of the Liaohe oilfield in 1970, and the city of Panjin grew up around it. The Shuangtaizi estuary reserve was raised to national level in 1988, and the wetland was listed under the Ramsar Convention in 2004. The red beach became a tourist site in the following years.

Why it matters for the living world

The Ramsar site covers about 128,000 hectares and supports more than 100,000 waterbirds of over a hundred species. It is the most important breeding ground in the world for Saunders's gull, a vulnerable species that nests among the Suaeda on open flats, and an important stop for the critically endangered Siberian crane and the endangered red-crowned crane and Oriental stork. The estuary is also the southernmost breeding area for spotted seals in the western Pacific. Reed marshes and tidal flats store carbon, filter river water and protect the coast. The site is a key link in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway.

People of the place

Panjin's people are farmers, oil workers, fishers and, more recently, tourism workers. Rice paddies combined with crab farming, in which river crabs live among the rice, are a local speciality. Reed cutting for paper and weaving has long been a seasonal job. Older residents remember eating the young shoots of Suaeda in hard times. Many families depend on the oilfield for income. Local people also work as guides and run services for visitors on the boardwalks of the red beach. In recent years local government and residents have taken part in restoring wetlands and in bird and seal protection work.

What it faces

Much of the delta's wetland has been lost to rice paddies, aquaculture ponds, oil installations and land reclamation. Oil extraction brings risks of spills and pollution, and roads and pipelines divide the marsh. Less water and sediment now reach the sea because of dams and irrigation upstream, and some red beach areas have shrunk as tides and sediment have changed. Tourism crowds and trampling damage fragile vegetation. Climate change and sea-level rise threaten tidal flats. In response, Panjin has run a programme of returning ponds to wetland, removing aquaculture ponds and restoring Suaeda and tidal flats, and has expanded protection for gull breeding areas.

Sources

Written for Regenerative Voices from the sources above. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.