Yan Chaojin, a 61-year-old farmer with nearly half-century of smoking history, now performs his forest ranger duties without the accompaniment of cigarettes and matches. "The policy of returning farmland to woodland has helped me to give up my bad habit," said Yan.

Since April 2000, Yulong village in Guangyuan City of Sichuan Province has had a policy of returning farmland to woodland. According to the policy, each farmer household will annually receive state subsidies -- 150 kg of grain and 20 yuan (US$5.23) -- for afforesting one mu (1/15 hectare) of their farmland. All households signed contracts with the village committee. Yan Chaojin was elected as the full-time forest ranger for the village.

The regulation of building Sichuan as an ecological bulwark in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River applies to one million farmers in the province, who are the first batch to return 200,000 hectares of farmland to the woodland or grassland. They have all signed contracts and undergone notarization for specific rights and obligations.

Sichuan is a province located in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Some 96.5 of its land are in the river valley. After years of arduous efforts, its forest coverage rose to 24.33 percent in 2000 from 21 percent in 1995, and is expected to reach 28 percent in 2005 and top 30 percent by 2010. According to the province's five-year plan between 2001-2005, 174 counties will continue the project of protecting natural forest resources, and 169 counties will undertake to retrieve 380,000 hectares of woodland and grassland from cultivated hillsides and afforest 400,000 hectares of deserted mountains.

(china.org.cn by Alex Xu June 19, 2002)