Richard Black, the BBC’s excellent Earth Watch reporter brings our attention to a tale from Japan, where the Oriental Stork, today’s Endangered All-Star, was extirpated in 1971: Modern farming methods destroyed wetlands along with the stork’s fish and frog food supply.
Now, Toyooka City hosts the Hyogo Prefectural Homeland for the Oriental White Stork, a breeding and reintroduction program combined with incentives for farmers to embrace organic farming, friendlier to the stork’s wetlands. Black reports that organic crops combined with ecotourism centered on the storks has increased municipal income by around 1%, something that the UN Environment Program hopes to replicate around the world during this International Year of Biodiversity. If you’re in Japan, visit the storks at Konotori no Sato Park, outside Tayooka.
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