Chinese government will spend 117 million yuan (US$14.14 million)
to move 559 families out of Wolong Nature Reserve in southwest
China's Sichuan Province to create a better environment for
giant
pandas.
Nearly 2,400 villagers will be resettled away from the reserve
between this year and next year, said Zhang Hemin, director of the
reserve's administrative bureau.
The land will be used for growing bamboo for the pandas.
A
growing population in the reserve had led local residents to ask
for more natural resources.
But their routines had already affected the habits of the giant
pandas living in the wild, and some villagers even poached rare
animals and secretly cut down trees in the panda's habitat, Zhang
said on Thursday.
"The resettlement is helpful to the protection of the pandas and
will greatly improve the reserve's ecological system as a whole to
make it a `green paradise' as well as their home,'' he said.
Zhang said the villagers would be resettled in a special
residential area of the reserve and they are encouraged to enter
tourism industry, such as running restaurants. Each will receive a
monthly subsidy from the government.
About 124 hectares of the land would be replanted with bamboo, the
favorite food of the endangered pandas, he said.
As
China's largest protective zone for the giant panda, the Wolong
Nature Reserve is home to about 100 wild giant pandas and more than
60 artificially bred ones.
There are only about 1,000 giant pandas left in the wild, mainly in
the hilly areas of China's Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi
Provinces.
(China Daily June 28, 2003)