On June 20, 2016 the team left Taiwan, flying to Korea, where they boarded a Moscow-bound plane. There they paid a visit to the Russian Academy of Sciences and signed a Russian‡Taiwanese memorandum of cooperation, before flying another three hours to the Arctic Circle and deplaning in Chorkur­dakh, Russia’s most northerly town with a population over 1000. They bought eight days of supplies before boarding a small boat that brought them to their base camp, where they met up with Sergey Sleptsov of the Russian Academy of Sciences and his assistant. Sleptsov has been studying white cranes in Siberia for more than 20 years. 

After four flights and two hours on a boat, having traveled more than 6500 kilometers with 149 kilos of gear, the research team, the first ever from Taiwan to study the Siberian tundra, reaches its destination. From left: Sergey Sleptsov, Ding Tzung-su, Huang Guang-ying, research-assistant-cum-porter “Yuri,” Chiu Ming-yuan, Liao Jen-hui and Chang Po-chun. (photo by Ruslan Kirillin)

An extraordinary journey

There was a hunter’s cabin three kilometers from the base camp, and a research station another 3 km beyond it. Sleptsov told them that if they walked for 2 km beyond that station, they would find nesting cranes.

On normal flat ground, walking 6 km would only take one hour at a quick pace, but on Arctic tundra during the summer, it’s essential to wear waders, and the terrain presents a constant struggle as you pull one leg out of the muck only to have the other sink into it. For the inexperienced, a 6-km trip can take 12 hours.

“A foolish lost bird and some kind, innocent and warm people were what prompted this unusual journey,” wrote Ding on Facebook after he returned. “They were responsible for us going to a latitude of 71°N in Siberia so we could shoot footage of these birds’ summer breeding grounds and gain an understanding about bird research in the Arctic.”  

A juvenile Siberian crane came to Taiwan after getting lost on his migratory journey. This accidental tourist helped to spark positive ecological change in his temporary home. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)

A lost crane comes to Taiwan

Siberian cranes migrate in family units. Normally young Siberian cranes fly with their parents from Siberia to the Po­yang Lake National Nature Reserve in mainland China’s ­Jiangxi Province. Between the breeding grounds and Po­yang Lake, there are also the Mo­moge wetlands in Ji­lin Province, where the cranes rest mid-journey. But in this instance, one young bird neither stayed there to rest nor went on to Po­yang Lake. Instead, it continued to fly south, to Peng­jia Islet and then to Taiwan, where it landed at the Qing­shui Wetlands in Jin­shan, New Tai­pei City.

It was December of 2014, and the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation had completed an ecological restoration of terraced rice fields at Jin­shan’s Ba­yan, inside Yangmingshan National Park. Under a program entitled “The Jin­shan Initiative: A Plan to Maintain the Qing­shui Wetlands and Bolster Local Industry,” the foundation had also adopted the Qing­shui Wetlands. The ultimate aim of the plan was to restore the wetlands (two-thirds of which had been drained) and plant enough rice in an environmentally friendly manner so as to meet the lunch needs of four local schools with a collective enrollment of 1800 students. It also aimed to provide birds overwintering in Taiwan with sufficient habitat. 

Eight-petal mountain aven.

As a crane arrives, paddy fields revive

When the Siberian crane arrived at Qing­shui, Chiu Ming-yuan decided to leverage the bird’s power. He wrote a journal about it, and corralled the Forestry Bureau, the Council of Agriculture, and New Tai­pei City’s Animal Protection Office and Agriculture Department, along with some experts and documentary photographers, to help “expand the scope of the foundation’s work, making connections and drawing everyone’s attention to the wetlands, to agricultural issues and to the very future of Taiwan.” And “everyone” isn’t limited to the people of Taiwan. Instead, it includes Japan, Korea, Russia and mainland China. After searching hard but fruitlessly for a Siberian crane expert, the foundation appealed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and enlisted the aid of Zhao Shi­xuan of the Representative Office of Taiwan in Russia, who helped them obtain permission to conduct primary research at Siberian crane breeding grounds.

The Siberian crane story played out in parallel on two separate stages. The first was at the Siberian crane’s “base” in the Qing­shui Wetlands, which the bird had chosen as his temporary home. The bird photographer Chen Cong­long captured numerous images of the crane interacting with the old farmers ­Huang Zheng­jun and Guo Zhiwang, who kept the fields flooded with water and held off on using pesticides for the bird’s sake. But as the bird reached sexual maturity, it began to fly far farther from Qing­shui, as if it were searching for a way back home. It caused quite a stir when it appeared at Tai­pei’s Song­shan railway station in the middle of the night. 

The bird has helped to fuel a virtuous cycle. Before the arrival of the crane, the wetlands featured only 0.5 hectares of paddy fields under environmentally friendly cultivation. After the first year, the area had grown to 3 ha, and the goal for 2016 was 10 ha.

marsh Labrador tea

A long polar trek

The second stage on which this drama has played out is a distant and expansive one. Chiu Ming-yuan and ­Chang Po-chun decided to follow the crane’s journey in reverse. First they went to Japan to see another lost crane. Then they left for the Po­yang Lake reserve, where they paid a visit to Jia Yi­fei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. They also got in touch with the International Crane Foundation and met with the foundation’s photographer ­Zheng Zhong­jie. They then went deep into the Mo­moge wetlands to find evidence of how climate change was reducing cranes’ habitat and food for their migrations. Eventually, when they received NT$6 million of assistance from the Ministry of Culture and the Wistron Foundation, they proceeded to the breeding grounds of the Siberian crane.

On May 12, 2016, after 521 days in Jin­shan, the young crane finally left Taiwan for good. During its stay on the island, more than 40,000 people had come to see it, including 1200 foreigners. It provided a rare opportunity to see a Siberian crane up close. What’s more, it was the first time people anywhere were able to watch a crane amid blooming water lilies.

More than a month after the crane’s departure, the Siberian survey team set out on their mission according to schedule.

In July, August and September, the tundra of Siberia becomes the land of the midnight sun. It’s a paradise of sorts, yet a dangerous one. The perils hit home one day when those who had stayed behind at the camp lost touch with filmmaker ­Chang Po-chun, who had gone ahead to set up a photography tent. His absence alarmed them, but eventually God shone upon the team: Everyone was safe, and ­Chang, over the course of a day and a night, had captured images of the chicks bursting from their shells.

After returning to civilization, the team took stock: Liao Jen-hui and Chiu Ming-yuan, who were responsible for collecting plant samples, had collected 30 species of tundra plants and an additional 14 varieties of moss, as well as a reindeer skull, for the Council of Agriculture’s Endemic Species Research Institute and the Academia Sinica. Dr. ­Huang Guang-ying had collected nearly 20 species of insects and had recorded observations of peregrine falcons. Ding ­Tzung-su had found a mammoth tusk that was 10,000 years old, but without the proper permits he wasn’t able to take it back to Taiwan.

Bird species statistics were compiled by Ding and ­Huang Guang-ying. The team had discovered nesting sites for ten different bird species and recorded at least 40 bird species, almost all of which featured males with magnificent breeding plumage.

A Taiwan research team had never surveyed plant and animal species this far north.

Chang Po-chun became the first Taiwanese filmmaker to have captured images of Siberian cranes breeding, and one of the few ethnic Chinese to have ever documented the full life story of Siberian cranes.

Arctic willow.

The trip’s rippling effects

Returning to Taiwan, they spent 56 hours on the Trans-Siberian Railway. This segment of the trip was an emotional turning point for every member of the team: Chiu pondered how to continue pressing for environmentally friendly agricultural practices to protect natural ecologies. Ding, who read the whole of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s memoir Triste Tropiques aboard the train, agreed: “The biggest impact the trip had on us wasn’t in giving us more material to boast about, but was rather in bolstering our sense of mission with regard to protecting natural ecologies.”

Huang, on the other hand, told Chiu that the trip had given him an opportunity to peer into his soul and ask himself some deep questions, as well as to see firsthand how global warming was causing methane to bubble forth from formerly frozen lakes. “We’ve got a lot of work to do on behalf of planet Earth.”

Meanwhile, at the Qing­shui Wetlands, students continue to eat locally grown environmentally friendly “Little Crane Rice,” as the old farmer ­Huang Zheng­jun expands his water-lily fields, longingly awaiting the return of his Siberian crane….

hare’s-tail cottongrass

Huang Guang-ying, head of conservation research at Taijiang National Park, uses zipper bags and an alcohol solution to collect insect specimens. (photo by Chiu Ming-yuan)

Huang Guang-ying (right) examines a map of Siberia and the Arctic, discussing locations and plotting routes with Sergey Sleptsov of the Russian Academy of Sciences. (photo by Chiu Ming-yuan)

The more than 500 days that the Siberian crane stayed in Taiwan left locals with many moving memories. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)

Liao Jen-hui, executive director of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation, collected samples of Arctic mosses and plants. Here she holds some cup lichen. (photo by Chiu Ming-yuan)

This is the first time the flag of the Republic of China was ever unfurled above the Arctic circle in Siberia. It was also the first time a research team from Taiwan had entered the Arctic. From left: Chiu Ming-yuan, Liao Jen-hui, Chang Po-chun, Huang Guang-ying and Ding Tzung-su. On the ground in front of them are a mammoth tusk and reindeer skull. (photo by Ruslan Kirillin)

During Siberian summers, plants must make use of a short 100 days to propagate their next generation. In the vast Arctic expanses devoid of prominent landmarks, the Taiwan research team’s journey was full of dangers. (photo by Chiu Ming-yuan)