Study that argued China’s solar policy hurt birds may have miscounted 2 billion egrets
Critics claim report in top US journal lacked quality control and used data suggesting one park had more than the entire global population
It also brought up heated conversations on social media about negative narratives surrounding China’s green energy sector.
The data used to plug into a bird diversity index was taken from the China Birdwatching Record Centre, the largest citizen-science platform for bird observations in the country.
Late last month, a social media post from the China Ornithological Society warned of potential errors in the centre’s records, which it said may have influenced the paper’s conclusions.
It pointed to a logged observation in 2015 of 2.1 billion little egrets in a wetland, and another in 2022 of 1.3 billion red-billed blue magpies in a park, both in Guangdong province.
