The population explosion of certain protected species in China has placed people in some areas in a battle for survival with their wild animal neighbors.

Over the past six years, Lu Yongman, a farmer in Beijing's Yanqing County, has suffered many headaches as a result of the wild boars, which enjoy "free banquets" on his fields. He has been fighting a losing battle on his remote fields, trying to ward off the greedy pests.

Lu is not the only one with such problems in the county, a national model ecological protection zone.

Confronted with a growing number of complaints of this kind, the county government produced a rule stipulating government compensation to be paid to farmers whose crops have been destroyed by wild animals since last May. Under the rule, the first of its kind in Beijing, Lu was able to take the matter to a local court and received compensation. But in Yichang, in Central China's Hubei Province, the number of wild boars has grown so huge that killing them seems to be the only option.

In view of the severe damage that wild boars have caused to local farmers, the Hubei provincial forestry authority has allowed for the hunting of 1,000 wild boars in Yichang this year.

A similar situation has also occurred in other Chinese regions, such as the Nangunhe River National Nature Reserve in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, where locals have suffered from the ravages of the growing tiger population.

But people living there are not as fortunate as their counterparts in Yichang, as tigers are a protected species and the local government does not have enough funds to offer local people any compensation.

"Instead, we are trying to develop a new type of economy, which will not depend as much on the consumption of natural resources as agriculture does," said Li Yongjie, a leading forestry official of Lincang Prefecture, where the nature reserve is located.

Other options for the local economy include the processing of the area's rich forestry materials, such as bamboo.

However, Li admitted that it will be difficult to obtain the necessary funds and equipment to get this plan off the ground in what is one of the country's poorest prefectures.

"But we have to try (the new type of economy). Because a nature reserve can only be sustainable if its human residents are fed," Li said.

(China Daily March 3, 2003)