all right mate yeah you good think he's good
when you think of urban environments you think of huge areas filled with vibrant
colours thousands of people and of course the sights and sounds well it doesn't
get much more vibrant than right here we have traveled to a city that regularly
makes the top ten most densely populated areas in the world but we're not here
just to experience the city life we also want to find some of the fantastic
wildlife species that call this concrete jungle home
I'm Hannah Stateville and welcome to Hong Kong
Hong Kong city is surrounded by waves of green wilderness with much of the land
around 75% still being wild so it's no surprise that as the city expands the
wildlife seems to be moving in but is this urban environment good for the
wildlife is the world are good for the people and most importantly are they
coexisting well let's find out just over 7.4 million people live in Hong Kong and
that population number is only set to rise but a total of 24 country parks
have been designated for wildlife nature and the local people so we've come here
to kam Shang country Park located to the northwest of the city a beautiful area
that spans just over three kilometers squared but it's home to the largest
wild macaque population in Hong Kong macaques are known to be hugely
adaptable to urban environments around the world being opportunistic omnivores
they eat a variety of foods anything from fruits and seeds to bark and
insects so there are around 2,000 wild macaques here in Hong Kong and this area
is home to around 16 to 1800 of them but the species we see here is actually a
hybrid between the long tail and the rhesus macaque there were introduced
here in the nineteen hundreds and their populations have food and that's because
the amount of food that is available to them and humans eating them 30 social
troops are found across the city and due to the abundance of resources some are
getting bigger and bigger so you come up here right beside of this
massive busy motorway and the largest troop of macaques here in Hong Kong is
around 250 individuals and the think we'd just about to run into them cuz we
are surrounded so we've come up by the side of this really busy motorway and
behind me is a mother with her baby and she
proving it she's coming in sand macaques will latch on to their mothers underside
and for the first few weeks they feed exclusively on her milk before starting
to try solid food then as they get older they begin to travel up top hitching a
ride with not just their mothers but also other closely related females in
the group
it's really strange because they are a wild animal but being this close to them
they seem so human and their expressions you can see them in their faces
with strong social hierarchies in close knit bonds their behaviors aren't that
dissimilar to our own sibling squabbles being a regular occurrence and social
grooming used to make amends being one of our closest relatives they are highly
intelligent but living so close to humans has its downfalls as leftover
waste appears all too tempting making the impact of this crossover of habitats
all so clear to see
yet Hong Kong hasn't just provided areas on land for its wildlife it's also set
aside marine parks for its underwater creatures so we've just left kam shell
and we're now headed to lantau island to hopefully see one of the rarest species
in Hong Kong there's only around 47 of them left so because of course we get
lucky today now this species is found in and around
whole cold waters particularly at the mouth of the Pearl River estuary but now
it's a highly fragmented population a beautiful animal and extremely rare to
see and it is the Chinese white dolphin also known as the Hong Kong pink dolphin
to help us in our search we contacted Thea Bradford a marine biologist who
works closely with Hong Kong Dolphin watch Thea goes out on a weekly basis
taking groups of people to look for the dolphins and we wants to find out
exactly what makes them so special Sathya tell us about the wonderful big
dolphins at Hong Kong and why exactly are they pink so they've been affected
by the dark waters coming from the Pearl River Delta it's meant that the dolphins
haven't been able to get much sunlight on their skin so they have lost the dark
coloring that you see in other oceanic dolphins which means that now they're
completely white but the reason that they look pink in Hong Kong is because
Hong Kong has very very warm waters because of the ocean currents nearby so
they bring their blood vessels close to the top of their skin and so they look
pink and that's why they're pink because of their blood vessels of the skin yes
it's all because of their thermoregulation as we headed out
further around the island the realities of trying to find such a dwindling
population quickly becomes apparent with around 158 in 2003 - now just 47 which
is roughly a 70 percent decline
and after a good few hours out at sea our hope of finding them runs out so
unfortunately we haven't seen the pink dolphins today why do you why do you
think that is so unfortunately we probably didn't see them because there
just aren't enough around in Hong Kong anymore sometimes you just get unlucky
and you don't see them on a trip with an increase in habitat loss noise pollution
and discarded waste in the surrounding waters these are just some of the
factors that are contributing to their decline so as you can see this is recent
footage of them here so they are here but today we've just been really really
unlucky and it's because the population is so low and it's a real shame I'm
absolutely gutted despite not finding any of them today after --there had
shown us some recent footage it made us feel a little better and we wanted to
find out what is being done to try and protect the dolphins in their natural
environment so that the hong kong government has got a wonderful
monitoring program that they do throughout the entire year
and we also have some marine park built just for the dolphins the dolphins don't
have a full recovery plan in place as more of a monitoring aspect at the
moment but that is what they need to make a full recovery as a proper
recovery plan as our time draws to an end it's clear the efforts have been and
are still being made to provide species with areas they can call their own and
in the case of the pink dolphins hopefully we'll have better luck next
time Hong Kong is truly a beautiful city with
so much to offer and the sheer amount of green space that's been created here is
remarkable and seemingly some species are thriving but then others are not
both because of man's effects on the surrounding habitat but thanks to
stringent efforts from conservation groups they could still be hope for the
Hong Kong pink dolphin and that is what we must focus on not just here but in
all about now very wild urban cities
so I do hope you've enjoyed your time with this here and do subscribe to earth
unplugged for more fascinating wildlife videos from around the world but for now
from us here in Hong Kong we'll see you later