{"id":885668,"date":"2026-09-06T15:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T15:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/885668\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T15:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T15:30:14","slug":"study-that-argued-chinas-solar-policy-hurt-birds-may-have-miscounted-2-billion-egrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/885668\/","title":{"rendered":"Study that argued China\u2019s solar policy hurt birds may have miscounted 2 billion egrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

A study in one of the world\u2019s top scientific journals<\/a> that concluded China\u2019s policy-driven solar energy expansion was harming bird diversity has come under fire after allegations emerged that the analysis may have used observations of 2.1 billion little egrets in a single park \u2013 more than the entire global population of the species.<\/p>\n

It also brought up heated conversations on social media about negative narratives surrounding China\u2019s green energy sector.<\/p>\n

The study in question \u2013 by researchers in China, Vietnam and the United States \u2013 published in Science magazine, a leading US peer-reviewed journal, on August 20. It compared the strength of China\u2019s solar policy against changes in bird diversity<\/a> from 2014 to 2023.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Late last month, a social media post from the China Ornithological Society warned of potential errors in the centre\u2019s records, which it said may have influenced the paper\u2019s conclusions.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A study in one of the world\u2019s top scientific journals that concluded China\u2019s policy-driven solar energy expansion was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[4815,49,48,95,307234,307232,295,48319,15674,144742,307235,66,22429,7425,772,5801,307233],"class_list":["post-885668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-august","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-china","tag-china-birdwatching-record-centre","tag-china-ornithological-society","tag-environment","tag-guangdong-province","tag-hong-kong","tag-lund-university","tag-meagan-phelan","tag-science","tag-south-china-morning-post","tag-sweden","tag-united-states","tag-vietnam","tag-wetlands-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}