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Contribution short abstract

Black-faced Spoonbills and other birds are part of the political atmosphere of the Taiwan Strait. Conservation efforts play into local politics, as well as cross-strait relations. An ethnography of human-bird relationality provides new insights into the affective politics of the Taiwan Strait.

Contribution long abstract

"Why is it that a few birds that appear out of thin air can affect the whole development of an industrial zone?" Such was the reaction of township officials in 1987, when some 100 Black-faced Spoonbills began feeding at a horseshoe-shaped dike built at Tainan’s Tsengwen River in preparation for industrial construction. When there were only 288 Black-faced Spoonbills in the world, birders launched an environmentalist movement that stopped the industrial park and led to the creation of protected areas. In 2023, Taiwan recorded 4,228 Black-faced Spoonbills, 64% of the global total. The Spoonbill is now a mascot of Tainan, even as their conservation sites are still contested in township politics.

Spoonbills spend their lives flying through human geopolitical hotspots. Some of their most productive breeding spots are in islands of the Demilitarized Zone of the Korean Peninsula. After fledging, they transit China’s highly-developed Yellow Sea coasts, glide south through the Taiwan Strait and even reach the South China Sea. Ornithological research and conservation were promising areas of collaboration between China and Taiwan until 2020 when China pressed BirdLife International, for political reasons, to kick the Taiwanese partner out of the nest.

Based on fieldwork in Tainan, Kinmen, and the Matsu Islands in 2023-2024, I explore the affective politics of the Taiwan Strait from the perspective of human-bird relations. Where do birds and their habitats fit into the material arrangements of the Taiwan Strait? How might avian denizens of the atmosphere contribute to the affective politics of cross-strait relations?