Let's go to the national park this summer and meet them by chance. People and nature | parks | countries

Today is World Environment Day, and the theme of our country is "building a modern society where humans and nature coexist harmoniously.". Since October 2021, China has officially established five national parks, including Sanjiangyuan and Giant Panda. Over the past year, national parks have made positive progress in ecological protection and other areas.

Positive progress has been made in the construction of national parks in China

The Three Rivers Source National Park is accelerating the implementation of the Three Rivers Source Key Ecological Restoration Project, strengthening the protection of source ecosystems such as glaciers, snow capped mountains, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and alpine meadows. The population of rare wild animals such as snow leopards, Tibetan antelopes, and wild yaks is steadily growing, and the macro ecological environment is continuing to improve.

The Giant Panda National Park has strengthened protection and restoration, and implemented the construction of key ecological corridors such as Jiuzhai Baima Motianling and Niba Mountain.

The Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park has opened up cross-border migration channels for tigers and leopards, achieving the settlement, reproduction, and diffusion of Northeast tigers and leopards. Monitoring shows that the survival rate of Northeast tiger cubs exceeds 50%. In recent years, multiple new cubs and leopards have been added, and the population of rare species continues to expand.

Since the construction of Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, the ecological environment has been effectively protected. The number of Hainan gibbons has increased for three consecutive years, and 28 new species of wild animals and plants have been discovered within the park, enriching biodiversity.

Mount Wuyi National Park continues to promote the background survey of biological resources, and has found many new species of animals and plants in recent years. On the basis of the results of the unified right confirmation and registration of natural resources in Mount Wuyi National Park, the confirmation, demarcation and database construction of the national park boundaries have been basically completed.

Including the five officially established national parks, the National Park Spatial Layout Plan issued at the end of last year determined the selection of 49 national park candidate areas nationwide. At present, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and various regions are steadily and orderly carrying out the creation of new national parks in accordance with relevant requirements.

Sun Hongyan, Deputy Director of the National Park Development Center of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration: Currently, we are promoting the improvement of the establishment conditions for the pilot areas of the Qilian Mountains, Qianjiangyuan, Nanshan, Shennongjia, and Shangri La national park system. We have promoted the creation of candidate areas for 12 national parks, including the Yellow River Estuary, and have completed third-party creation evaluations for some of these candidate areas.

The construction of the Giant Panda National Park has achieved remarkable results through multiple measures taken simultaneously

In October 2021, the Giant Panda National Park was officially established. Now, more than a year has passed, what significant changes have occurred in the park? Next, let's follow the footsteps of the patrol officers and go to the national park to find the answer.

The Giant Panda National Park involves three provinces: Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu. The Sichuan area accounts for more than 80% of the total park area, and the wild giant pandas living here account for more than 90% of the total wild giant pandas in the national park.

In the Sichuan area of the Giant Panda National Park, there are over 3000 frontline patrol officers, who have conducted over 100000 patrols on 663 patrol routes in 2022.

Pang Mingjian, a patrol officer at the Dayi Conservation Station of the Giant Panda National Park: With the same route and altitude, snow leopards may only be photographed once a year in this area before, but now they can be photographed more than eight times a year.

In addition to strengthening patrol, more precise measures have been taken to comprehensively strengthen ecological protection in Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area, the core area of the Giant Panda National Park - the World Natural Heritage Site.

Li Weiren, Leader of the Leading Group for Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area to Create a National Demonstration County for Ecological Civilization Construction: We connected 176 fragmented habitats, opened the giant panda ecological corridor, developed an implementation plan to replace firewood with electricity, reduced the consumption of forest resources by the people, and strictly observed the red line of ecological protection.

After the establishment of the Giant Panda National Park, Sichuan has restored a 26.56 square kilometer habitat for giant pandas, including ecological corridors, and wild animals are increasingly appearing.

The establishment of Liaohekou National Park has achieved initial results

The Liaohe River Estuary is the northernmost estuarine wetland in China and an important component of the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea ecological zone. Since the National Park Administration agreed to launch the creation of Liaohekou National Park in October 2021, various creation efforts have shown initial results.

The total area of the candidate area for the Liaohekou National Park is about 170000 hectares, integrating 8 natural reserves including the Liaohekou National Nature Reserve. Currently, it has passed the evaluation of the creation work organized by the National Park Management Bureau and the demonstration of the scope zoning plan. The proposed candidate area for the Liaohekou National Park has been delineated, covering the areas with the best ecological quality and richest biodiversity in the Liaohekou and surrounding waters. As of now, all creation work has been basically completed.

Wang Xiwu, Director of the Nature Reserve Management Department of Liaoning Provincial Forestry and Grassland Bureau: Our province has successively implemented projects such as "Returning Livestock to Wetland", "Wetland Protection and Restoration", and "Black billed Gull Habitat Restoration", restoring 85900 acres of wetlands and restoring 17.6 kilometers of natural shoreline. The wetland ecosystem has been effectively protected and restored.

The candidate area of Liaohekou National Park is located in an important area where the Bohai Sea and land intersect, preserving the world's most complete temperate coastal wetland ecosystem. It has important value in the research of global estuarine wetland protection systems.

The creation of Karamiri National Park is steadily advancing

The candidate area of Karamaili National Park, located in Xinjiang, is a concentrated distribution area of low altitude ungulates in China, with typicality, systematicity, authenticity, integrity, and national representativeness of the ecosystem. At present, according to the national planning and deployment, the creation of Kalamari National Park is steadily advancing.

In April 2022, the National Park Administration agreed to carry out the creation of Karamaili National Park, and Karamaili National Park officially entered the creation stage. The Xinjiang Forestry and Grassland Bureau organized a technical team, together with experts from various fields such as Beijing Forestry University, Chinese Academy of Forestry, and Xinjiang Academy of Forestry, to basically complete 22 prescribed tasks in 8 aspects of the creation of Karamaili National Park in accordance with the requirements of the National Park Establishment Guidelines, and comprehensively promote the integrated protection and systematic governance of the Karamaili regional ecology.

Li Jicai, Deputy Director of the National Park Creation Office of Xinjiang Forestry and Grassland Bureau: The candidate area of Karamaili National Park is home to numerous ungulates wild animals in arid deserts, such as Mongolian wild donkeys, goose throated antelopes, and pan sheep. More than 80% of the Mongolian wild donkey population in the country is distributed, making it the birthplace of the endangered species, the largest wild release habitat and breeding ground in the world.

The candidate area of Kalamari National Park is an important ecological barrier to prevent the eastward expansion of Gurbantunggut Desert, and also an important ecological corridor connecting Tianshan Mountain and Altai Mountain. Here, there are various types of desert vegetation such as Haloxylon ammodendron, white Haloxylon ammodendron, and sand jujube, as well as various rare wild animals, making it a typical representative of desert ecosystems in temperate and arid regions around the world.