The Year of the Ox begins on Friday, and in the shadow of Hong Kong’s futuristic urban skyline, wild bovines are getting some love.
Cattle and water buffaloes embody hard work and serenity in the 12-animal Chinese zodiac, and were used on Hong Kong farms for centuries to plough rice fields, pull carts and provide milk and meat.
However, as farms began to shut down in the 1970s, many animals were abandoned, and their descendants became the wild cattle and buffalos commonly seen in rural Hong Kong.
Photo: Vincent Yu, AP
Ho Loy of the Lantau Buffalo Association and her team of volunteers dedicate most weekends to checking on the cattle that roam the biggest island within the territory of Hong Kong.
Starting in the middle of the morning, they distribute grass and hay bought with donated funds to various herds around the island.
“The animals are a very important part of our culture, of our regional planning — especially of our rural planning,” Ho said.
The animals provide an opportunity to explore “what that means to Hong Kongers about the nature, the remaining nature value in Hong Kong.”
The Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department estimates that there are about 1,100 brown cattle and 120 water buffalo distributed across the territory’s Lantau Island and rural parts of the New Territories, near the border with mainland China.
The Lantau Buffalo Association hopes to preserve the animals and their habitat, reduce friction with growing human communities and lobby for long-term environmental preservation policies.
While Hong Kong is best known for its neon-lit, densely packed urban environment, more than three-quarters of the remains green hills and forests.
Over her 14 years of caring for the animals, Ho, a Lantau resident, has come to know them well.
Water buffalo are “very shy, they spend most of the time in the wetland. So, preserving the wetland is one thing will help them to live healthy,” she said.
Cattle, on the other hand, are very sociable, especially if you have food.
“They will come and get your food and they are not scared of humans,” Ho said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home