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 Feathered friends: The Big Bird team in action at Tai Po Kau forest |
"Incredible!", "amazing!" and just plain "wow!" were some of the words used to describe the support given by the Force, Junior Police Call Presidents, members and their friends to the World Wide Fund for Nature's 18th Big Bird Race held March 2 and 3, which saw a Force record of over $200,000 raised.
Once again, Police personalities Ian Tyzzer and John Holmes organised a team representing the JPC to compete in the annual charity event to raise funds for WWF's local branch.
This year, school examinations affected the participation of JPC members in the race, so Ian and John joined the team again to help spur things along. They were joined by Wong Tai Sin District's Patrick Pang Shu-hung, and veteran Sha Tin JPC member Stanley Lip. Team driver was the Police Driving School's John Ip Kwok-fu.
The race itself was unremarkable from a bird watching point of view, and the crew were placed 15th out of 17 teams, in the process identifying 116 species in the 24-hour period. The winning team (the Eagles) saw 158 species, and the total seen by all the teams combined was 219.
Far more significant however, was the support given to the JPC team in terms both of money and individual sponsorship. Altogether over 1,500 sponsors contributed over $200,000 making this the most successful year ever for a Police team. Even more remarkable was that 90 per cent of the sponsors were Junior Police Officers and students, showing environmental concern was now widespread.
Total funds raised hit $1.3 million, of which $850,000 was in corporate sponsorship. The money will be used by WWF to fund education programmes and special projects in Hong Kong for the benefit of the community.
On behalf of WWF, the team thanked all their sponsors for being so generous and looked forward to their continuing support.