Rex Chiu 12A (Environmental Conservation)

In our four day CAS Challenge Week, our group visited two different habitats in Hong Kong, a wetland habitat near Nai Chung and a woodland habitat Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve, and had a talk about sustainability in Hong Kong. Through this process, not only did we learn a lot more about fauna and flora in Hong Kong, it also developed our research and collaborative skills.

The most memorable day for me on this trip was certainly Nai Chung. After being briefly introduced to the wildlife there, we helped clean up debris and trash left by others within the wetland area, amounting to at least 76 pounds in total. Since the trash was quite heavy, we had to carry the trash out in groups, improving our collaborative and coordination skills. Most of the trash we collected were bulky pieces of metal and plastic (probably) left by passing boats or construction workers, and a minority of the trash were metal cans. This made me reflect on people’s ethics and the balance between reducing costs and polluting the environment — while dumping unwanted waste in the sea, or at a nearby site was a lot cheaper than sending them to the landfill, this practice devastates the natural, pristine habitats, and kills the wildlife that live there, which, in my opinion, is just unethical. 

By the end of this CAS trip, I learnt the valuable lesson of not taking things as given — while Hong Kong has a few wildlife habitats, we should not expect that everyone would leave it that way, but it is actually up to all of us to preserve and conserve these remaining areas of wilderness. And now, looking back at what we have done in this short yet packed CAS Challenge Week, I have certainly enjoyed it and learnt a lot along the way.